Real name: Kémokho Kandara Bamody Cissokho

Effective period / Period of releases: 1981 - 1992

Senegalese kora player. The most popular, and arguably the greatest, kora player of his generation.
He was born in 1923 in Ziguinchor in Casamance (southern Senegal) and began playing the kora in 1944. In 1966 (or 1967) he was given the title ‘Le Roi de la Kora’ (the king of the kora) by the late Guinean president Ahmed Seku Toure. Soon after he met and married his second wife Mahawa Kouyaté and together they were known as the ‘Royal Family of Mandinka music’.
He died in 1994, aged 71.
His sons Djeour Cissokho and Nana Cissokho, and his nephew Ali Boulo Santo, continue the family kora tradition.