Ears of the People: Ekonting Songs from Senegal and The Gambia

One of several traditional West African lutes that served as a precursor to the modern banjo, the ekonting (sometimes spelled akonting) was developed among the Jola people of Senegal and Gambia. Ekontings are made from a hollowed gourd with animal skin stretched over it and a long, wooden neck bearing strings that terminate at different points along it. Throughout its history, it was (and remains) a social instrument, a storytellers tool used to accompany songs about anything from courtship and death to local wrestling matches. Woven into its long history are the atrocities of the slave trade, which brought remnants of ekonting music to Caribbean and American shores, where enslaved people fashioned new iterations of familiar instruments out of the materials on hand. That it has a contemporary presence at all is a testament not only to the tenacity of its creators but the simplicity of its build and earthy allure of its sound. Released by Smithsonian Folkways, Ears of the People is somehow the first album of ekonting music to be released by a Western label. Despite the prominence of its five-string descendant in American music, the ekonting has remained rather elusive, championed only recently by banjo stars like Bela Fleck and Rhiannon Giddens, though the efforts of a Gambian Jola historian named Daniel Laemou-Ahuma Jatta have helped preserve its tradition. He writes the forward in the delightfully exhaustive booklet of this collection, which features 25 recordings by nine present-day ekonting players, of which he is one. Shepherding the collection to fruition is ethnomusicologist Scott Linford, who recorded the songs in the field and writes in loving detail about the nimble 71-year-old Abdoulaye Diallo, the touring master Jeandum Djibalen, and Elisa Diedhiou, one of the instruments few female purveyors. Like these musicians, who generally build their own ekontings, each instrument is different in construction, making for a colorful range of personality and tone. Folk music fans may recognize the familiar picking style that was transmitted through the generations to become banjos clawhammer pattern. But aside from these faint echoes, the songs here are pure Senegambian expression and tell not only stories of the regions past but of its present and future. ~ Timothy Monger