Lamine Sonko is currently a Higher Degree Researcher and an MPhil candidate in Ethnomusicology at the School of Music, supervised by Associate Professor Bonnie McConnell and Professor Christopher Sainsbury. An interdisciplinary artist, composer, and practice-based researcher, he investigates African embodied knowledge systems and epistemologies, exploring how African pedagogies and embodied cultural practices generate alternative ways of understanding knowledge, identity, and the world through artistic practice. 

Sonko’s work is deeply grounded in his cultural role as a guewel, a descendant of the Sing Sing clan and the Korings of Kaabu, and as a member of the Serer, Wolof, and Mandinko cultural communities of Senegal. His practice is informed by a lifetime of learning through oral transmission, observation, and participation in sacred rituals and ceremonies, guided by cultural elders and knowledge holders. These lived experiences form the basis of his practice-led research, which positions artistic creation as a mode of knowledge production.

As Sonko explains, “Guewel practices are frameworks for communicating ancestral, metaphysical, and ethical knowledge.” His research examines the intersection of traditional African musics and knowledge systems, artistic practice, and contemporary research methodologies, including in his recently published chapter in the Cambridge Companion to Music in Australia, co-authored with Associate Professor Bonnie McConnell.

Research Project

Sonko's research investigates guewel knowledge systems as living, embodied epistemologies, examining how traditional African cosmologies and philosophies are transmitted through cultural practices of music, ritual, dance, and storytelling. Adopting a thesis-by-creative-works approach, the project combines scholarly analysis with multimedia creative outputs — including musical composition, live performance, and visual projection — to explore how these knowledge systems can be reimagined in contemporary contexts.

Focusing on case studies including initiation ceremonies, sabar rhythms and dance, and xibaar storytelling, the research examines how guewel practices operate as frameworks for communicating ancestral, metaphysical, and ethical knowledge. Through practice-based methods, the research explores how interdisciplinary arts can serve as a method of knowledge production, allowing guewel epistemologies to remain dynamic, adaptable, and accessible, while preserving their cultural integrity and continuing their transmission to future generations.

Still from Deup, premiered at ACMI, 2022. Photo by Olive Moynihan 

Creative Work & Upcoming Projects

Sonko is founder and director of 13.12, an interdisciplinary project that explores traditional African ways of knowing and being. Through this initiative he collaborates with cultural elders, artists, and communities to develop intercultural and intergenerational knowledge exchange and research through multi-artforms.

His creative projects include the theatre work Guewel and the short documentary film Deup, which premiered at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in 2022. As a composer, he contributed to the Grammy Award-winning album Winds of Samsara, and his work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at the Melbourne International Film Festival and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK).

Watch a video of Lamine Sonko and The African Intelligence performing “African Ambiance” at WOMADelaide.

Looking ahead, Sonko and 13.12 are working on the next phase of the Guewel project, with plans to tour the work internationally and throughout Australia. Through theatre, the project brings ancestral knowledge into contemporary artistic practice, offering audiences a multisensory experience of African knowledge systems.

For more about these projects, visit www.1312.com.au.