Scott Linford, assistant professor of music, has produced and recorded a new album—Ears of the People: Ekonting Songs from Senegal and The Gambia—as part of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, a nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. The album features nine master players of the ekonting, a three-stringed instrument made from a gourd and papyrus reed by people of the Jola ethnic group. Linford also plays the ekonting on two tracks. The album was named Folk Album of the Month by The Guardian (January 2023).

In featured photo and video at top, which is also taken by Linford, is Jules “Ekona” Diatta, an ekonting player, rice farmer, and palm wine harvester from the village of Mlomp in Casamance, Senegal.

This is the first full-length album to focus on ekonting music of the Senegambia region. Ethnomusicologists, including Linford and his Gambian collaborator Daniel Laemou Ahuma Jatta, have shown that the ekonting shares many similarities to the American banjo, which was also made from a gourd in its early form and is still played with a similar technique today. The instrument is part of the historical and contemporary relationship between African and American musics. The ekonting is also a living tradition of the Jola people, who use it to accompany songs of love, war, wrestling, and many other contemporary subjects.