Senegalese kora player Diali Cissokho has made North Carolina home: "I'm safe here, I'm happy, I have a family, I have a...

Senegalese kora player Diali Cissokho has made North Carolina home: "I'm safe here, I'm happy, I have a family, I have a band and they're my brothers" he says. Cissokho travelled here from West Africa with the storytelling tradition of griot, connecting cultures usually separated by the Atlantic Ocean. "When I'm playing, I feel my ancestors a lot, and especially my Mom. It's like she's beside me," Cissokho says. And his music communicate this sort of deeply felt historical consciousness, allowing listeners an immediate and emotional means to relate to kora playing and griot storytelling, forms perhaps unfamiliar to them in the United States.