RECENT WORKS
guewel | 2025
A ritual journey through an ancient African cosmovision, exploring landscapes of the soul and preparing us for life’s beginnings and endings. In a landmark collaboration with the National Theatre of Senegal, Guewel channels deep ancestral power through primordial sounds worlds and sacred rhythmic dance, offering a reflection on our interconnected, collective human experience. READ MORE
taamo | 2023
Five years ago, musician and artist Lamine Sonko embarked on a research project with the Guewel elders of Dakar, Senegal to explore how ancient knowledge is embedded in traditional rhythms, melodies, and songs. His new single ‘Taamo’ is one of the many creative outcomes of this process. Taamo is characterized by cyclical rhythms and melodies played by kora and strings, and the hypnotic ancient melody and vocal chants induce a trance-like state in the listener. Recorded in Naarm and Senegal, Taamo features Anita Quayle and Xani Kolac on cello and violin, Joseph Franklin on bass as well as Guewel elder and musician Doudou Rose Thioune and flautist Issa N’dour.
DEUP | 2022
Directed by Lamine Sonko, short documentary film DEUP premiered at Australian Centre for the Moving Image in 2022. Deup offers a non-linear mosaic of moments, illuminating the metaphysical nature of ancient musical spheres in a remote area of Senegal. There, people live within an ancient soundworld where music, rhythm and ritual are the fabric of collective experience. READ MORE
Before Nightfall #12
Lamine Sonko in Collaboration with SPEAK PERCUSSION, presented as part of Melbourne International Film Festival 2020.
Before Nightfall presents a reimagined score for the famed Senegalese film Hyenas, which has been restored and recut to short format for this extraordinary cinematic experience. All the music was specially created for this magnificent audiovisual work for MIFF 68½.
Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty, the 1992 film Hyenas tells the story of a woman who returns with vengeful intent to the poverty-stricken town that shunned her for falling pregnant out of wedlock.
13.12
13.12 explores and activates ancient African ways of knowing and being to deepen understanding of ourselves, how we relate to each other and the world around us.