Bamako

Hailing from Budapest but now resident in Canada, Lukacs grew up with Hungarian Jewish folk music and trained on the violin from an early age in the classical western European repertoire. She changed strings when she discovered the kora by chance on a trip to Burkina Faso in her early 20s. She enrolled for a master class in Paris with Toumani Diabaté who was impressed enough to invite her to study with him in Bamako where she spent seven years in Mali, learning to speak fluent Bambara along the way and spending two years with the Ensemble Instrumentale du Mali.

All this rich background comes together on a splendid, self-released debut album. Her playing is rich and lyrical, combining empathy with virtuosity while her melodic compositions combine Mande tradition with a modern pop sensibility. On songs such as ‘Dream of Love’ and ‘Too Many Times’ she sings her English lyrics in a country-folk voice with a hint of Gillian Welch or Iris DeMent, which should sound incongruous but doesn't. She also sings in Bambara on ‘Yafa’, which features Habib Koité on guitar, and holds her own with aplomb on ‘Farama’ alongside the mighty voice of Trio da Kali's Hawa Kassé Madé Diabaté.