Nuru Kane: Senegalese Musician with the revolutionary Guimbiri

Nuru Kane is a Senegalese musician born in the Dakar town of Madina.

He travelled to Europe in 2000 but had the chance of visiting Marrakech (Morocco), where he exchanged his based guitar-playing skills with Guimbiri, an Arab instrument similar to a guitar originated from the Guinawah people of ancient Sudan, in the hands of an old man in the Marrakech, who taught him how to play it.

Back to France, the Baay Faal Guinawah (BFG) is born to two Senegalese, a Malian, a Moroccan, an Algerian and French.

The guimbiri, an electric kora with calabash and the Arab chore, as well as the Afro-Arab music of Nuru, sounded too revolutionary for the French producer. It was in England that the healing music, as he calls it, found his success.

BBC named his first album 'Sigil' in 2006. Nuru’s musical themes are peace and unity in Africa as one nation.

He sings in Wolof, Arabic, French, English and Fula, and praises Mame Cheikh Ibra Faal.

In his second album, 'No 1Bus' along with big African musical icons like Baba Maal, Nuru had the opportunity of getting the sponsor of a French African music promoter to make his first tour in Africa, in The Gambia where he performed with a strong rhythm and blues music that added more honour to his reputation at the Alliance Franco Gambienne on Kairaba Avenue recently.

From The Gambia, the Senegalese musician will travel to Kaolack, St Louis, Dakar and Zinguinchor before going back to Paris.

Nuru and the Baay Faal guinawah are preparing for a third album with a gypsy group in April 2011 and a tour in Pakistan.

Nuru’s plan and project is to continue researching on redeems around the world with a patched work of traditional African instruments, following the steps of his role model Ali Farka Toure, the African bluesman.