Driving collective polyrhythms, blazing frontline horns & virtuosic kora stylings collide across seven dynamic meetings of traditional Mandé music/culture and contemporary jazz on supergroup, Balimaya Project!

Led by composer/arranger and leading UK-based Djembe player, Yahael Camara Onono, Balimaya Project intently synthesize and bridge London’s bustling jazz circuit with traditional repertoire and folklore of the Mandé peoples of West Africa, and in turn connect the music’s contemporary and ancestral forbearers.

Following the group’s formidable debut set at influential label, festival & weekly live music event, Jazz re:freshed in October 2019, Balimaya Project’s debut album Wolo So has made waves across the music scene since its release. Meaning the essence of kinship in Mandé’s Maninka language, the word Balimaya articulates a family model not limited to blood relations but of a shared history and experience, of friendship and community.