Mohamed Kemoko Sano
Mohamed Kemoko Sano (c. 1937 – May 25, 2006) was a Guinean traditional musician, dancer, choreographer and director.
Biography
Born in a village near Macenta, in the Forest Region of Guinea c. 1937 (he was unsure of the year of his birth but knew his birthdate to be earlier than 1942, the date recorded when he entered school), Kemoko Sano became a leading figure in the performing arts in Guinea in the decades following Guinean Independence in 1958, when the traditional performing arts received full government support and were used both to galvanize the identity of the new nation and to present it to the outside world. After his troupe in Macenta won first prize in the national arts festival in 1964, Kemoko Sano was brought into the Les Ballets Africains, the first and best-known of the Guinean national dance troupes. A fall during a performance in Paris the same year left him paralyzed, an accident from which he made a full recovery after his return home to Macenta. Twenty-five years later, Kemoko Sano was the dundun player atop a float of 115 Guinean percussionists in Jean-Paul Goude’s parade extravaganza La Marseillaise in Paris for the French bicentennial in 1989.
Kemoko Sano headed the second national dance troupe, Ballet Djoliba from 1973 – 1986. As Choreographer of Les Ballets Africains from 1987 to 2000, he created new works in collaboration with his colleagues, and went with Les Ballets Africains on on several international tours to Europe, Ghana, Mexico, Colombia, Australia, and to North America in 1991 (la Clôche de Hamana), 1993 (Silo), and 1996 (Heritage).
After state support and management of performing arts troupes ended, Sano founded his own troupe, Ballet Merveilles in 1986, which performed at Alice Tully Hall in 1999 and at the World Financial Center in 2001 under the sponsorship of the Traditional Center for Music and Dance, at Symphony Space in 2003 presented by the World Music Institute, and at the Franco-Guinean Cultural Center in Conakry. Alumni of Ballet Merveilles are currently performing outside Guinea in Circus Baobab (Guinea/France), Afrika! Afrika! (Germany), Legends of West Africa (United States), Soho Dounia (United States) and teaching (Karamoko) in Japan.
Kemoko Sano taught music and dance as Fulbright Artist-in-Residence at San Francisco State University in the spring semester of 1994 and at Long Island University/C.W. Post and SUNY at Stony Brook in 2000 – 2001.
The Dance Collection of the New York Public Library has ten hours of video footage from a trip Sano made with Hamidou Bangoura of Les Ballets Africains to the interior of Guinea in 1991. Over the past year, Sano collaborated with Hamidou Bangoura on the creation and rehearsing of a new evening-length work for Les Ballets Africains, Mémoire du Mandingue.
Mohamed Kemoko Sano, African music and dance ensemble director and choreographer, died May 25, 2006 in Conakry, Republic of Guinea, from complications of diabetes, according to his companion Louise Bedichek.
Kemoko Sano is survived by numerous children, the youngest of whom, Makhissa Sano (b. 2000), lives in Oakland, California.