Lucy Durán

Lucy Durán (PhD SOAS, BMus MMus King’s College, London) is Professor Emerita of Music in the Department of Music, SOAS University of London, where she has been teaching since 1992, retiring in the summer of 2023, though she is still very active in her field. Before SOAS, post-university, she worked as sub-editor of Grove’s Dictionary of Music & Musicians, and after that, at the British Library National Sound Archive as curator of the collection of world and traditional music recordings, an initiative that she created. 

Durán’s field work and research has focused primarily on Mande music in Mali and Gambia. Her research output is multi-faceted and multi-media (documentary films and radio, also album production), and is predominantly public-facing. She is recipient of many awards, including three Grammy nominations for her albums of Malian music, a Sony Award for her BBC World Service radio series “Latins in the USA”, and the AHRC 10^th anniversary ‘Best AHRC-funded film since 1998’ for ‘The Voice of Tradition: Bako Dagnon and her family’. She was the presenter of the acclaimed weekly one-hour radio programme, World Routes, on BBC Radio 3 from 2000-2013. The programmes are archived and can be listened to here.

Durán’s publications include pioneering and influential research on the kora, a West African harp; on Malian female singers and their music (eg her article on wassoulou music, one of the most frequently-cited articles in the British Journal of Ethnomusicology); and on the handclapping songs of young Malian girls, on which she directed for Kronos Quartet a film nominated for best short documentary in the Cannes PanAfrican Film Festival, 2021. She was awarded a major grant by the AHRC Beyond Text scheme resulting in the unprecedented films, Growing into Music, which trace the musical development of young children in informal contexts across Mali, Guinea, Cuba, Venezuela, Azerbaijan and North India. Her film ‘The Voice of Tradition: Bako Dagnon and Family’ won the prize for “Best AHRC/AHRB- funded film since 1998” in the AHRC’s Research In Film awards, 2015. They are available for viewing online. Durán’s recent film work includes as co-director and writer (with French-North African film-maker Laurent Benhamou) of an unprecedented 52” documentary on the kora, Ballaké Sissoko, Kora Tales which has been screened in major international film festivals such as Vues d’Afrique in Montreal,and Encounters South African Documentary International Festival (Cape Town). The film is receiving numerous awards, including Best Artist Film (Feature) in the Berlin Indie Film Festival 2023. The film will be screened at the 2025 Symposium at Tufts.

Her two Impact Case Studies (ICS) in the UK REF 2021 received 4*s and were the top ICS for music in the UK. One of these focused on the album she produced featuring the celebrated Kronos Quartet from San Francisco and Trio Da Kali from Mali, Ladilikan, which won multiple awards. She was inducted into the KRONOS QUARTET HALL OF FAME in 2019. From 2015-16 Durán was advisor/consultant/composer/translator (Mandinka-English) to ROOTS (the remake of the TV series) – for which she also composed six new songs in Mandinka for ROOTS including “the Slave rebellion Song” and “Mandinka Ringshout”.  

The bulk of Durán’s publications have been the albums that she has produced, with studio recordings of music from Gambia, Senegal and Mali. To date she has music-produced 26 albums and received three Grammy nominations and many awards for her productions. She launched the international career of Toumani Diabaté, master kora player (1965-2024). These albums, originally released on Hannibal Records, were for many years buried in the vaults of Warner, who had bought the catalogue off Rykodisc. They were therefore unavailable for physical purchase, but they remained cult listening on streaming platforms. They have now been purchased by the UK label Chrysalis, and are being reissued with new sleeve notes and other material.