Tidiane Thiam

Tidiane Thiam is a Senegalese guitarist, folklorist, photographer, and artist known for his tranquil playing style that reinterprets ancient Sahelian folk music for the modern Western-style guitar. After collaborating on 2017's Waande Kadde with hoddu player Amadou Binta Konté, he made his solo debut in 2020 with the instrumental guitar album Siftorde. Thiam comes from the small river town of Podor, which is the northernmost town in Senegal, bordering Mauritania. He taught himself to play guitar by picking out melodies on late-night radio broadcasts. He became somewhat of a scholar on folkloric traditions of the Sahel region and used its music as the inspirational source for his own meditative fingerstyle playing, which is often improvised. Much of the music of his region is played on the hoddu, a four-stringed ngoni common in Senegal, and in 2017 he teamed up with Amadou Binta Konté, a local fisherman and hoddu player, to make an album of instrumental duets called Waande Kadde. It was released internationally on the Sahel Sounds label, which promotes music from this region worldwide. Three years later, Thiam recorded an album of his own solo guitar work. Appearing again on the Sahel Sounds label in 2020, Siftorde was recorded live into a single microphone in a single night. ~ Timothy Monger