Director / Composer / Cultural Leader
Lamine Sonko is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural leader. His work draws on traditional African embodied knowledge to create multi-artform experiences inspired by his cultural background as a guewel (cultural role) of the Sing Sing clan and a member of the Serer, Wolof and Mandinko cultural communities of Senegal. From early childhood, he was immersed in this traditional training within his community under the guidance of Guewel elders.
Sonko has developed an internationally recognised career spanning music, theatre, film and cultural research. His early composition works featured on award-winning albums, including the Grammy Award-winning Winds of Samsara, large-scale choral works with The Boite Millennium Chorus, Camberwell Chamber Choir and Speak Percussion’s short film ‘Hyenas’ presented at the Melbourne International Film Festival and Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK). More recently he has expanded his role into directing and composing for theatre and film including the Green Room Award-nominated theatre production Guewel, developed with the National Theatre of Senegal, and documentary film DEUP, premiering at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI).
Sonko is a respected cultural leader and Artistic Director of 13.12, a non-profit arts organisation he founded to elevate traditional African interdisciplinary arts. As director, he has led the development of new artistic works while creating platforms for intercultural exchange and artist development.
