Farafina Kan means ‘the sound of Africa.’
We are an intergenerational West African percussion orchestra and dance company based in Washington, D.C. — founded in 2004, and built on the understanding that this music belongs to a people, a history, and a set of obligations that outlast any of us.
That means two things at once. It means maintaining the integrity of traditional West African music — the rhythms as they were played, in the ceremonies they belonged to, for the people they belonged to. And it means transmitting that music forward to a generation born thousands of miles from where it started, so that it arrives in their hands whole rather than flattened. Most cultural organizations pick one. They preserve, and the tradition becomes a museum. Or they adapt, and it becomes a style. We have spent twenty years refusing that choice.
In 2004, Mahiri Fadjimba Keita founded Farafina Kan in Washington, D.C. The city was already one of the most significant African drumming communities in the United States. Djimo Kouyate — a 149th-generation griot of the Kouyate clan and a founding member of the National Dance Company of Senegal — had arrived in 1981 and built Memory of African Culture. Baile McKnight had been building drums with his own hands and putting them into the hands of children who could not otherwise have held one. That ecosystem is what Farafina Kan grew out of, and we say so.
What began as a percussion orchestra became something wider. A dance company. A youth ensemble. A next generation. Classes for three-year-olds and classes for adults who came to it late. School residencies. College partnerships. An annual concert that families plan their August around. Travel to Ghana. And, most recently, a certification program for instructors across the country who want to teach this work with more depth than they were given.
Our home base is the Adinkra Cultural Arts Studio in Mount Rainier, Maryland, where children who started here at four years old are now teaching the four-year-olds.
Founder & Artistic Director
Mahiri Fadjimba Keita was born in New Jersey. He was formed in a tradition that is not from New Jersey. Those two facts are not in tension — the second is the evidence for what he teaches, which is that this tradition can live fully in anyone, anywhere, if the transmission is real and the lineage is honored.
He is a certified professor of Tam Tam Mandingue International, the global djembe academy founded by Grand Master Mamady Keïta. That certification was never awarded on technique alone. Mamady evaluated every candidate himself, testing not only their command of the djembe and dunun but their knowledge of Malinké culture, ceremony, and the full traditional repertoire. That Mahiri holds it — and that Mamady called him son — is the most precise statement available of where he stands in this lineage.
He also studied directly under Famoudou Konaté, lead djembefola of Les Ballets Africains de la République de Guinée for twenty-six years and honorary professor of Didactics of African Musical Practice at the Academy of Arts in Berlin. And under Djimo Kouyate, griot, kora master, and the cultural anchor of Washington's African arts community. To have studied under all three is not a common biography.
He has lived, studied, performed, and taught in Brussels, in Guinea, across Asia, and in Ghana. Not visited — resided. He has produced more than seventeen major concerts and performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's DanceAfrica Festival. He has taught thousands of students, from four-year-olds in public schools to university students in academic residencies.
He builds his own drums — djembe, dunun, sangban, kenkeni — a craft he began as a teenager and has practiced for decades. A person who has built a drum understands it differently than a person who has only played one.
He does not call himself a master. He describes himself as a student who has been honored to sit near great ones. That is not modesty. It is the correct relationship to something larger than any individual, and it is why his teaching carries the weight it carries.
We name our lineage in every room we enter.
Born in Balandugu, Guinea, given the name Nankama before he could walk; apprenticed at seven under Karinkadjan Kondé; chosen at fourteen for Le Ballet National Djoliba out of fifty percussionists, its lead soloist by 1965, artistic director by 1979; founded Tam Tam Mandingue in Brussels in 1991 — Manding music's first formal qualification system, tested every diploma candidate personally; died June 21, 2021. “Farafina Kan exists because of him.”
Born in Sangbaralla, Hamana region of Upper Guinea, home of the dununba rhythm family; playing ceremonies by eight; joined Les Ballets Africains in 1959, lead djembefola for twenty-six years; honorary professorship, Academy of Arts Berlin, 1996, for Didactics of African Musical Practice; one of a small number of initiated masters of the Malinké tradition.
149th-generation Kouyate griot; founding member, National Dance Company of Senegal; kora master; came to D.C. in 1981 after 25 years with Senegal's Ministry of Culture; founded Memory of African Culture, cultural center of gravity for D.C. African arts for two-plus decades.
African American drummer, drum builder, cultural educator; built drums by hand and put them into the community; his insistence that African Americans hold both the right and responsibility to carry this tradition is part of Farafina Kan's foundation.
One of Guinea's most revered djembefolas, central figure in the Ballet National Djoliba tradition; named among the masters Mahiri studied under.
The work does not happen alone. Farafina Kan shares this path with Aidoo Holmes, Kevin Aziz White, Laji Kamara, Nkenge, and a wider community of instructors, performers, and builders across Washington and beyond — including Diallo Sumbry and the Adinkra Group, whose Back2Africa work has carried our young people to Ghana. The tradition does not live in individuals. It lives in community. These names belong here.
Coming soon.
“If you just jam on the djembe, it will one day be forgotten and die. When you learn how to make the drum talk the language of the people who even today play and sing with it — it takes on a life of its own.”
— In the tradition of Famoudou Konaté
Farafina Kan · The Sound of Africa · Washington, D.C. · Guinea · Brussels · Ghana
