Love Quote by Sona Jobarteh

Music isn’t just Sona Jobarteh’s medium here; it’s her argument for how power moves. When she says music is “at the heart of everything”, she’s refusing the tidy separation between art and impact that audiences often demand: play beautifully, stay apolitical, don’t make it complicated. Her phrasing makes music less like decoration and more like infrastructure - the emotional and social circuitry through which people actually listen to one another.

The intent is bluntly strategic. “Communicating” comes first, because change without shared language is just noise. Jobarteh’s career gives that word extra weight: as a Gambian kora virtuoso and composer navigating a tradition historically dominated by men, she embodies how sound can contest norms without writing a manifesto. The subtext is that music can sneak past the usual gatekeepers - literacy barriers, partisan cynicism, the exhaustion people feel when activism sounds like scolding. Rhythm and melody do what policy papers can’t: they build memory, mood, and belonging in the same gesture.

The quote also carries a quiet rebuke to “awareness” culture. She doesn’t frame music as a charity accessory to real work; she frames it as the work - a force that mobilizes, educates, and legitimizes new possibilities. In a global context where African artists are often flattened into “authentic” vibes for Western consumption, Jobarteh’s claim reads as insistence: this tradition isn’t museum glass, it’s a living tool for shaping the future.