Our Calling by Piers Faccini & Ballaké Sissoko

Two decades after their very first collaboration, British-Italian folk songwriter Piers Faccini and Malian kora virtuoso, Ballaké Sissoko return with a mesmerizing album: Our Calling. Set for release in February 2025, this fascinating dialogue between a virtuoso instrumentalist at the peak of his powers and an inspired songwriter and wordsmith, succeeds in creating new song forms with a lightness of touch that bridges continents and plays with tradition.

The seeds of Our Calling were planted when Sissoko and Faccini first crossed paths at Label Bleu in the early 2000s when they began forming a slow burning friendship over the years, connecting and experimenting in new paths between Manding traditions and British and Mediterranean folk song forms, Sissoko was a guest on Faccini's 2nd solo album Tearing Sky in 2005. In 2020, their dialogue found new inspiration under the banner of the label Nø Førmat!, when Sissoko invited Faccini to sing Kadidja in the Bambara language on his acclaimed album Djourou, and later with The Fire Inside— sparks that ignited their shared vision for the making of their first very duo album together.

Through ten exquisitely crafted tracks, Our Calling is a sonic and narrative praise song for migration in all its forms; be it through Nature, as seed borne on the wind, by birds such as the Nightingale, traveling between West Africa and Europe at the turning of new seasons or by humans, across the centuries and along trade routes, sharing musical modes and rhythms. The two friends’s entirely acoustic dialogue was recorded in Paris side by side and live in the studio over five days. The album’s originality is that it feels deeply Malian at its musical core, all the while being seamlessly infused with an essence of folk songwriting, sung in the English language.

Recorded by Frédéric Soulard (Shapes of the Fall), the album unites an extraordinary cast of musicians, including Vincent Segal, Badjé Tounkara, and Malik Ziad.