At The Courtyard · McGregor
Derek Gripper is one of South Africa’s leading guitarists whose love of the kora set him transcribing and recording some of its greatest works, changing the face of classical guitar...
Fifteen years ago, Derek Gripper did what everyone said was impossible: he recorded the works of Mali's greatest virtuoso, Toumani Diabaté, on solo classical guitar. What followed has been an unusual career. A discography of nearly thirty albums moves from Diabaté to Bach to Arvo Pärt to Keith Jarrett-style improvisation.
His collaborators include Diabaté himself, classical guitar legend John Williams, and most recently, kora master Ballaké Sissoko. His string-quartet arrangements of Diabaté's music were premiered by the Kronos Quartet.
Derek's original impulse had been to make a point: Classical audiences had long accepted African rhythmic ideas as raw material for European and American composers, but the complete works of the African oral tradition remained outside the "classical" canon. By transcribing and recording Diabaté, Derek was arguing that the classical world could credit Africa’s music in it’s original sources, and that the word "classical" should belong to Mali as easily as it belongs