BéréSanké Percussion, Kocassalé Dioubaté, Hand-made drums, Workshops, Performances
Hand-made African drums, instruments, music, workshops and performances.
Mansa Musa the Magnificent - The Height of Glory
The most celebrated of all of Sundiata's successors was his grandnephew, Mansa Kankan Musa I, or Mansa Musa the Magnificent, who came to power several decades after the death of his legendary predecessor. He ruled over the Mali Empire while it was the source of almost half the world's gold.
Musa was a devoted Muslim and while trade flourished in the Mali Empire, Islamic scholarship thrived under his rule. He founded the Sankore University in Timbuktu and instituted a program of free health care and education for Malian citizens. Craftsmen and Islamic scholars came from all over the Muslim world to study at Sankore’s guilds.
Mansa Musa is most famous for his hajj (Pilgrimage to Mecca) in 1324 which drew the attention of both the Islamic world and Europeans during his stopover in Egypt. Accompanied by an enormous entourage of 60,000 courtiers and servants, richly dressed and carrying three million pounds of gold in modern value, Musa apparently dispensed so much gold in Cairo that the commodity’s value plummeted and did not recover for another 12 years.
Everywhere he went he became legendary for his generosity and extravagant spending. Wherever he halted on a Friday, he paid for the construction of a mosque.
The Mali Empire, previously little known beyond the western Sudan, now became legendary. The image of Mansa Musa bearing nuggets of gold was subsequently commemorated in maps of the African continent.
