Kele Kele Love crooner, Tiwa Savage, and Gambia’s kora icon, Sona Jobarteh, are being featured on this weekend’s CNN African Voices Change makers, sponsored by Globacom.
Highly prolific Tiwa Savage kicked off her musical career as backup singer for A-listers such as George Michael and Mary J. Blige.
Renowned for her eclectic mix of Afrobeat , hip-hop and pop, Tiwa dropped her maiden album ‘Once Upon a Time’ in 2013 and thereafter supported it with seven singles: “Kele Kele Love”, “Love Me (3x)”, “Without My Heart”, “Ife Wa Gbona”, “Folarin”, “Olorun Mi” and “Eminado”.
The album was nominated for Best Album of the Year at the 2014 Nigeria Entertainment Awards and for Best R&B/Pop Album at The Headies 2014.
Among many others, Tiwa won Best African Act at the 2018 MTV Europe Music Awards, becoming the first woman to win in that category.
She also won the Best Female West Africa Award in 2017 and 2018, and the Soundcity MVP Award for African Video of the Year in 2020.
She has shown appreciable interest in youth empowerment and breast cancer screening projects and has raised funds to build schools in Nigeria.
On her part, Sona Jobarteh, is a multi-instrumentalist, who plays the cello, guitar and traditional kora which is a 21-stringed harp-like instrument. She is also a composer.
Born in 1983, Jobarteh is the first female professional kora player to come from a family of celebrated griots.
She attended the Royal College of Music in the United Kingdom where she studied cello, piano and harpsichord.
She also went to the Purcell School of Music, England, to study Composition.
Her debut album was Afro-Acoustic Soul replete with songs about bittersweet love and social thematic concerns.
African Voices is broadcast on Saturday on DSTV channel 401 at 5.30 p.m. and is repeated on Sunday at 4.30 a.m., 7.30 a.m.,12.30 p.m. and 6.30 p.m. and on Monday at 5.30 a.m.
