Joe Driscoll is a London-based musician from Syracuse, New York. He performs solo, and uses recorded loops of his own beatboxing, and live looping using a sampler to fuse hip-hop, reggae, soul, folk and roots rock. Joe has supported Dirty Pretty Things, Regina Spektor, Coldcut, and The Sugar Hill Gang and has played regularly at the Big Chill, Glastonbury, Bestival, the Green Man and Beatherder.
Joe has formed a new partnership with the legendary Kora player – Sekou Kouyate. Sékou is a musician living in France from Guinea, who with his virtuosic playing 21-string African harp, “Kora”, earned the nickname “The Jimi Hendrix of Africa” and “Jimi Sékou Kora”. In his group Ba Cissoko, who have performed all over the world, the kora is used supplemented by electrical effects, usually used by rock guitarists. Sékou comes from a generation of West African family of artists. Their role and mission have always been carrying news, conflict resolution, recording history in songs and of course music and dance. This type of musical traditional is still being used to accompany rituals and ceremonies such as birth, baptism, marriage and death.
The fusion of Joe and Sekou’s individual styles has produced a live experience that blends the energy and grooves of hip-hop and funk with the vitality and rhythm of traditional West African music – all enveloped in a jazz-like virtuosity that guarantees you will find your feet stomping whilst your mind soars towards something approaching a spiritual experience – for atheists this may be the closest you get to as religious experience without the aid of hallucinogens!
