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 Lucy Duran Lucy’s passion for travel and music started early on - she spent the first two decades of her life living pretty much out of a suitcase while the family lived in Chile, the USA, England and Greece. Schooling was a little irregular, but music was a constant, and was eclectic and exciting - at home she listened to anything from Bach to Andean music and flamenco. Her biggest musical influence was from her Spanish father, a pianist and composer who had fought in the Spanish civil war against Franco, and though exiled from Spain and no longer a professional musician, never lost his enthusiasm for music. They had regular sessions around the piano singing his arrangements of songs from Spain and Latin America, and Spanish parties at home would continue late at night dancing to Cuban music, something that has stood Lucy in good stead ever since! Lucy did her degree in Music at King's College, London University, which she saw as a means to an end – to study non-western music. Greek and Indian music were her first passions. But her direction changed dramatically after she heard a recording of the West African Kora and fell in love with its ethereal sound. She packed her bags once more and went to study with Amadu Bansang Jobarteh, a Kora maestro in the Gambia, and from there, went on to Mali, where she began working with various artists including the young virtuoso Kora player Toumani Diabate, producing his first seven albums, including Kaira and New Ancient Strings, both now considered landmark albums of the 21-string West African harp. In the 1980s, while working as a curator at the National Sound Archive, Lucy began to present occasional features on traditional music for Radio 3, and even had a crack at presenting radio 4’s Kaleidoscope, a brilliant exposure to live radio and a sobering reminder that world music was her real forte. She joined the School of Oriental and African Studies (London University) in 1992 as Lecturer in African Music, and since then has been going backwards and forwards to Mali researching the music of its flamboyant divas, receiving her doctorate in 1999. World Routes saw the light of day as a weekly programme in September 2000, with Lucy as its regular presenter, and since then she’s been lucky enough to travel around the world recording features on location in places as diverse as north Vietnam and Peru. Meanwhile she continues to produce albums by several acclaimed Malian artists: Kora player Toumani Diabate, singer Kasse Mady Diabate (his album Kassi Kasse won a Grammy nomination in 2003) and ngoni player Bassekou Kouyate (the acclaimed album Segu Blue). Her most recent production is the album Mano Suave by Sephardic singer Yasmin Levy. |
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