Archive Recovery
Search for festival programs, posters, newspaper reviews, radio listings, television records, photographs, and recordings connected to the Konteh family tours.
Konteh Family Heritage
Following the Footsteps
Tracing the North American journeys of Alhaji Bai Konte and Dembo Konteh and the Konteh family lineage, with the hope that Konteh Jaliyaa Legacy can return to places where their ancestors once carried the kora.
Purpose
A Road Already Opened
Before Konteh Jaliyaa Legacy gathered in Jahtoe Studios, the road had already been opened by the elders.
Alhaji Bai Konte, Dembo Konteh, Malamini Jobarteh, and other Mandinka kora musicians carried the sound of the kora across North America. They performed for folk, blues, jazz, radio, television, educational, festival, and community audiences.
Their journeys were also made possible by people who recognized the significance of the music and helped carry it across the ocean. Among the most important were American producer Marc Pevar and his wife, Susan Pevar, whose time with Alhaji Bai Konte’s family in Brikama helped create one of the foundational recordings in the international history of the kora.
They opened the road. The new generation now seeks to walk that road again.
Jaliyaa
The Kora and the Keepers of Memory
The kora is a twenty-one-stringed harp-lute of the Mandinka people. It is traditionally played by griots, also called jali, whose role includes preserving genealogy, praise, history, family memory, and moral instruction through music and story.
In this tradition, music is not only entertainment. It is archive, witness, inheritance, and living speech. A melody can carry a name. A rhythm can carry a family. A song can keep a road open long after the first travelers have gone.
Marc and Susan Pevar
The Fieldwork That Helped Carry the Kora Abroad
Marc and Susan Pevar occupy a central place in this story. In 1971 and 1972, they lived with Alhaji Bai Konte’s family in Brikama for nearly a full year. Susan received an anthropology grant to study the role of women in Gambian society, while Marc spent time learning, listening, documenting, and building a deep relationship with the family and the music.
Their time in Brikama was not a distant academic encounter. They lived within the compound, came to know the family, and witnessed the daily life surrounding the music. That closeness gave the later recordings their unusual intimacy and historical force.
The 1973 Recording
Marc Pevar recorded Alhaji Bai Konte in The Gambia using high-end field equipment powered by a twelve-volt battery. At the time, there was no electricity or running water in the compound.
The result, Kora Melodies From the Republic of The Gambia, West Africa, became one of the landmark recordings that introduced the kora to international audiences.
Historic Breakthrough
Newport Jazz Festival, 1973
The North American touring story gained major momentum in 1973 when Alhaji Bai Konte appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival. That debut helped bring the kora into one of the most visible American festival spaces of the era.
His instrumental command, rhythmic brilliance, and melodic invention reached listeners across jazz, folk, and world music audiences. For many, it was the first time the kora was heard not as a museum object or a distant cultural reference, but as a living concert instrument played by a master.
The response helped open further doors: festivals, radio, television, educational programs, collaborations, and the broader North American journey that followed.
Winnipeg Folk Festival
Winnipeg: A Circle Waiting to Close
In 1979, Alhaji Bai Konte performed at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. His appearance was part of a larger historic journey that helped bring Mandinka kora music to major North American audiences through festivals, radio, television, recordings, and live performance.
For Konteh Jaliyaa Legacy, Winnipeg carries a special meaning. Greig Jahtoe was raised in Winnipeg and was a regular attendee of the folk festival in his youth. Long before he recorded with Jali Bakary Konteh and Mafu Conteh in The Gambia, the festival had already been touched by the music of their ancestor.
To perform at the Winnipeg Folk Festival would therefore be more than a concert. It would be a return across generations: Greig coming back to the city of his youth, and Jali and Mafu returning through music to a place where their family lineage had already carried the kora.
This is one purpose of Following the Footsteps: to remember where the elders travelled, to recover the stories of those performances, and to return where possible with new music rooted in the same living lineage.
Woodstock 1979
The Felt Forum and the Tenth Anniversary of Woodstock
In 1979, Alhaji Bai Konte and his son Dembo Konteh performed as part of the tenth anniversary celebration of Woodstock at Madison Square Garden’s Felt Forum in New York City.
This was not a small cultural footnote. Bai and Dembo shared that historic musical space with major artists of the era, including Taj Mahal, Richie Havens, Canned Heat, Country Joe and the Fish, and others.
The moment placed Mandinka kora music inside a major American musical memory: Woodstock, folk revival, blues, rock, protest song, and the search for roots. In that setting, the kora was not outside the story of American music. It was part of the deeper story.
Historic Route
Places to Research and Retrace
The route is still being reconstructed. Some places are known through festival archives, radio history, film, public memory, and family accounts. Other places remain research leads.
- Newport Jazz Festival, where Alhaji Bai Konte’s 1973 appearance helped bring the kora into a major American festival setting.
- Winnipeg Folk Festival in Manitoba, where Bai Konteh appeared in 1979.
- Madison Square Garden’s Felt Forum, connected to the 1979 tenth anniversary celebration of Woodstock.
- Clearwater Festival and related Hudson River performances connected with Pete Seeger.
- WBAI-FM in New York City, where Pete Seeger and Bai Konteh appeared together.
- Philadelphia Folk Festival, where performances connected the kora with American folk audiences.
- Vancouver Folk Music Festival, where Alhaji Bai and Dembo Konteh appeared in 1979.
- Vermont radio concert history connected to Mount Washington and the Brentwood Hotel.
- PBS educational programming, including Jumpstreet.
- CBC and Canadian performance history.
- Universities, private concerts, radio stations, and community spaces still being identified.
Musical Crossroads
Where Mandinka Kora Met American Music
During the North American tours, the Konteh family shared stages, recordings, broadcasts, and musical spaces with important American and international musicians. These encounters placed the kora in conversation with folk song, blues guitar, banjo, jazz phrasing, gospel memory, and acoustic improvisation.
This mattered because the connection between West African music and American music could be heard directly. The kora was not presented as a distant artifact. It was present, alive, melodic, complex, and able to speak across traditions.
Names connected to the history
Pete Seeger, Taj Mahal, Elizabeth Cotten, The Paul Winter Consort, Tony Bird, David Amram, Ola Belle Reed, Richie Havens, Canned Heat, Robert Palmer, George Wein, Marc Pevar, Susan Pevar, and others are connected in different ways to the documented performance and collaboration history surrounding Alhaji Bai Konte and the Konteh family tours.
Each name points toward a broader story: how the kora entered North American musical spaces and helped listeners hear the African roots of many familiar sounds.
Living Research
The Work Ahead
Following the Footsteps is a living heritage project. It can grow as evidence is found, memories are shared, and archives are opened.
Performance Mapping
Build a map of known and likely performance locations across Canada and the United States, separating confirmed events from research leads.
Return Performances
Where possible, seek opportunities for Konteh Jaliyaa Legacy to perform in places where their ancestors once brought the kora.
A Living Lineage
Not Repeating the Past, Continuing It
Following the footsteps does not mean trying to recreate the past exactly. It means recognizing the road that was opened, honoring those who walked it first, and carrying the music forward with new melodies, new recordings, and new purpose.
Konteh Jaliyaa Legacy stands within that living lineage. Jali Bakary Konteh and Mafu Conteh carry family memory and kora inheritance. Greig Jahtoe carries a personal connection to Winnipeg and a long musical relationship with the Konteh family in The Gambia.
The story now moves in both directions: from The Gambia to North America, from North America back to The Gambia, and from the elders to the new generation.
Help Preserve the History
Share Records, Memories, and Leads
If you have photographs, concert posters, festival programs, recordings, radio archives, newspaper clippings, or personal memories connected to the Konteh family tours in North America, we would be grateful to hear from you.
Each recovered detail helps rebuild the map of this historic journey.
Contact the ProjectSources and Research Notes
Starting Points
This page is designed to grow as more material is recovered. The following sources provide starting points for the public historical record.
- Winnipeg Folk Festival past performer and decade archives list Bai Konteh among the 1979 performers.
- Tape Op Magazine’s interview with Marc and Susan Pevar documents their time with Alhaji Bai Konte’s family in Brikama and the recording context for the 1973 album.
- African Cultural Encounters documents Alhaji Bai Konte’s role in bringing the kora to mass North American audiences and provides additional tour history.
- Vancouver Folk Music Festival’s 1979 archive describes Alhaji Bai and Dembo Konteh coming from The Gambia to introduce the twenty-one-string kora to North American audiences.
- Woodstock 1979 archive material connects Bai and Dembo Konteh to the Madison Square Garden tenth anniversary Woodstock performance history.
Research status: confirmed details should be separated from family memory, oral history, and leads still requiring archival verification.