about — Lamine Sonko

Lamine Sonko is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural leader. Born and raised in Senegal, West Africa, he belongs to a hereditary lineage of Guewels (Griots), whose cultural role is to preserve and transmit knowledge through music, dance, storytelling and ceremony. From early childhood, Sonko was immersed in this traditional training within his community under the guidance of Guewel elders, alongside formal study in Senegalese music and dance through the Fambondy Traditional School.

Since migrating to Australia, 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. These include the ‘African Traditional Knowledge Initiative’, developed in partnership with the University of Melbourne, and curator of the 2025 African Indigenous Knowledge Symposium. He is a leading voice on African arts in Australia, contributing to publications and broader cultural discourse, including as a contributing author to The Cambridge Companion to Music in Australia, as well as through public forums and cultural exchanges that bring these perspectives into broader conversations about contemporary Australian society.

AWARDS

2026- The Green Room Awards >> Most Outstanding Ensemble for theatre work 'Guewel’ (Nominated)

2018- The Age Music Victoria Awards >> Best Global Act for 'Cool Out Sun' (Nominated)

2017- The Age Music Victoria Awards >> Best Global Album for 'Afro Empire' (Winner)

2015- The 58th Grammy Awards >> Best New Age Album for 'Love Language,' (Nominated)

2014- The 57th Grammy Awards >> Best New Age Album for 'Winds of Samsara' (Winner)

2012- Victorian African Community Awards >> Artist of the Year (Winner)

2010- ARIA Awards >> Best Global Album for 'Do Anything, Go Anywhere' (Nominated)

DISCOGRAPHY

2023 Taamo (single) >> Lamine Sonko

2017 Afro Empire >> Lamine Sonko & The African Intelligence

2015 Love Language>> Wouter Kellerman

2014 Winds of Samsara >> Wouter Kellerman

2011 Afro Mandinko >> Afro Mandinko

2010 Do Anything, Go Anywhere >> The Public Opinion Afro Orchestra

2010 Journey of Hope >> One Africa

2008 Desert Red >> Simmer

2007 Mandaela >> Asiko

PERFORMANCES & APPEARANCES

PRESS

“Showcasing a cohort of gifted performers - dancers, musicians, ritualists in front of lushly animated projections. Seven years in the making and framed as a cross-cultural collaboration - Guewel feels like the opening scene of a larger narrative and makes you curious for the epic adventure to follow ” - THE AGE

“In Guewel, Sonko activates the audience's curiosity by asking them to relearn their place among trees, stars, and deities through rhythm, performance and ancestral dialogue. Sonko reframes cosmology — a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe, the cosmos — as a Senegalese cosmovision: a holistic system teaching the interconnectedness of everything from the soil to the stars. ABC Arts

“Guewel was directed by Lamine Sonko who also composed its music. He showed wonderful skill and artistry in blending the different types of media into a cohesive whole. Eschewing surtitles to translate the spoken Senegalese text was a bold choice that added to rather than detracted from the experience…Simple yet complex, particular yet universal.” - MELBOURNE OBSERVER

“Guewel opens pathways beyond Western frames of understanding. Guewel’s authenticity lies not in rigid adherence to tradition but in truthfulness to lived experience… a ritual of remembering, a reflection on how everything begins, transforms, and returns” - MAV

“A strength of the film and Sonko’s ongoing work is his attention to sharing cultural knowledge alongside exceptionally skilled performances of music and dance” - Prof. Bonnie McConnell, ANU 13.12