Piers Faccini & Ballaké Sissoko - When The Word was Song (No Format!) [World Music]

The Slow Music Movement
4 days ago
1 min read

*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's January 1st Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***

The cover for Piers Faccini & Ballaké Sissoko's, When The Word was Song EP, showing two illustrated representations of the artists, one in red playing guitar and one in green playing kora, with text "WHEN THE WORD WAS SONG" above. Simple white background.

Piers Faccini is a British-Italian singer songwriter and guitarist, and Ballaké Sissoko is a kora player from a renowned griot family with a fondness for jazz, classical and world music collaborations. They’ve been hanging out for twenty years now, and it’s surprising that they’ve only got the well received Our Calling album to show for it.

Piers Faccini & Ballaké Sissoko stand side by side in a dimly lit room. One wears a tan hat and tunic, the other a blue jacket. Both appear serious and composed.

When The Word was Song is a four track follow up to the album and it continues to build bridges between the traditional sounds of West Africa and various strains of Western folk music. The roots of the blues has been well explored in recent years but worthy additions to the canon are always welcome and the EP starts with the laidback, just perfect fusion of Kora and Americana; Faccini looking to the US’ deep south for vocal inspiration.

Thankfully they continue in that vein with, “When the Word Was Song” - recorded whilst on tour, and the gently stomping “Harbour” - from the original album sessions, both of which join the dots between continents and centuries. The EP closer “Melancholy”, oddly the sweetest of the four cuts, sees the boys go in a cello assisted folk direction, but if you check their LP, and you should, then you know that’s how they role.