Might start the day with some peaceful contemplative meditation musics . . . we love Diabaté

Toumani Diabaté - Elyne Road 

‘The Mandé Variations’ is probably the most ambitious and challenging African instrumental album yet released. It is at once the definitive statement on where the kora is today and simply one of the most beautiful and melodically accessible albums you will hear this year. An important album for Africa, an important album for the world.

Recorded unaccompanied and entirely without overdubs, ‘The Mandé Variations’ is an African classical album that rocks and swings, that has learnt from Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix, yet remains entirely true to the kora player’s Mandé griot tradition.

Superbly recorded so that we can hear every touch of the strings, every throb and creak of the instrument’s wood and sinew, ‘The Mandé Variations’ takes us not only to the deep places of the Mandé soul, but almost physically into the kora itself. This is the ultimate statement on one of the world’s great instruments – until the next Toumani Diabaté album.