Sousou grew up in a musical family and has been singing and playing various instruments all her life. She was early on introduced to the kora as her father Roland Gottlow was playing together with Jali Alagi Mbye. Sousou has also played intruments like the violin, the recorder, the piano and the guitar, but it was the kora that did it. She fell in love with the sound of the kora the first time she heard it and she decided that as soon as she had finished the upper secondary school she would go to Gambia to learn how to master the kora.Since then she has been studying the West African musical tradition during several trips to Gambia and Senegal, emphasizing the kora as well as the songs and traditional tales of the mandinka and jali culture.Accordning to the tradition, only men play the kora. But times change and since Sousou has gotten the opportunity to study the musical tradition, she is now one of the few female kora players in the world.Sousou has performed various times on television and radio in Gambia and at festivals such as The Stockholm Kora Festival, Urkult, Malmöfestivalen and Nordlysfolkmusikfestival in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Sousou?Sousou Hagberth Gottlows given name was invented by her brother Mattis, who was eight years old at the time. Sousou is also a tribe and a language in Guinée and the name of the kora family Suso, which is the Gambian name for the Cissoko family.
