Mory Kanté

About Mory Kanté

Guinean-born kora player who made his career in Bamako and gave Mande music its first global pop hit with the 1987 single Yé Ké Yé Ké, the first African song to sell a million copies in Europe. He spent the 1980s pulling kora and balafon into electronic production, then returned to acoustic Mande music in the 2000s. He died in 2020 in Conakry of a long-running illness.