Omar Sosa & Seckou Keita featuring Gustavo Ovalles: SUBA (Cuba / Senegal / Venezuela)
When the pair met in 2012, Seckou loved Omar for his musical spirituality, whilst Omar saw in Seckou a rare ability to collaborate but not lose his identity. Their debut album Transparent Water (2017) was hailed as ‘beautiful, rhapsodic… spiritual’ (Songlines) and ‘mesmerising, evocative and sophisticated’ (World Music Central).
Sosa has released over 30 albums during an incredible career that has included nominations for seven GRAMMY or Latin GRAMMY awards; Keita is a multi-award winner, most recently as the prestigious BBC Radio 2 Folk Musician of the Year (2019). Recorded during lockdown and released in October 2021, Sosa and Keita’s second album SUBA is a hymn to hope, to a new dawn of compassion and real change in a post-pandemic world, a visceral reiteration of humanity’s perennial prayer for peace and unity. Joining Omar and Seckou in the studio and for live performances is the inimitable Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles.
December 2021
November 2021
Testimonials
MICHAL BONZCA, MORNING STAR ONLINE
‘An unhurried elegance of what Sosa calls “minimalismo” articulates this utterly modern musical idiom’
NIGEL WILLIAMSON, UNCUT MAGAZINE
'floating felicitously between spiritual jazz, New Age ambience and African tradition with splashes of classical cello and flute on a record that offers balm and solace’
MICHAEL TUCKER, JAZZ JOURNAL
'the musicianship evinces a composite mastery, synthesising as it does – with judicious harmonic colour and exquisite dynamic alertness – both intricate and openly cast aspects of melody, rhythm and atmosphere'
Dave Haslam, RnR Magazine
‘Startlingly beautiful and emotionally charged music that transcends genres’