School of Music

Born in Kagoshima, Japan in 1974, Sakaki Mango studied Kiswahili at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies, where he also began his research on Tanzanian music. He traveled the African continent to receive direct training from lamellophone masters Hukwe Zawose (Tanzanian limba), Garikayi Tirikot (Zimbabwean mbira). In addition, he also learns a wide range of thumb pianos such as the Ugandan lukeme, Congolese electric likembe etc. After many books related to the lamellophones and several works for the BBC (UK) or RFI (France), he is recognized as one of the specialists in this field. He amplifies those traditional handmade instruments by himself and plays it via pedal effects, sampler and loopers, while singing in his mother language, the dialect from Kagoshima. As a composer and performer, he has released many albums and recordings, in band configuration (“Limba Train Sound System”) and in solo format, many of them selected in best album rankings in Japan. He has recently also started to use a rare three strings zither from Southern Japan called “gottan”.