Weedie Braimah is a teacher and performer who has dedicated his life to both the preservation of African culture and the evolution of new pathways for folkloric West African music.

Braimah is a master djembefola, songwriter, folklore expert, and an executive producer for The Moja Saga. The Grammy-nominated musician is widely regarded as the premier voice of the Djembe. Braimah was born in Ghana and has family ties in New Orleans, but was mostly raised in East St. Louis. He was just 2 years old when he was introduced to West African drumming and culture.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Braimah comes from a long line of drummers and composers that dates back centuries. His mother, Ann Morris, was a jazz drummer and the daughter of Weedy Morris, also a renowned drummer and Braimah’s namesake. She married Oscar Sulley Braimah, a master Ghanaian composer and drummer known for bridging the gap between traditional African music and jazz with his remarkable group, Uhuru Dance Band. Braimah is also the great-nephew of Idris Muhammad, known previously as Leo Morris, who played jazz drum with legends like Horace Silver, Roberta Flack, Grant Green, and Pharoah Sanders.

In addition to his own family, Braimah learned African drum and dance by studying with greats like Famadou Konate, Sylvester Sun Shine Lee, Mamady Keita, Abdoul Doumbia, and more. By the time he was a teenager, he was considered one of the leading figures in the West African drum and dance world. Today, his mission is to honor the traditional African music he grew up with while also inspiring its rise to recognition as the root of so many genres of modern music. Braimah’s latest album, The Hands of Time, displays this goal through the fusion of jazz, rap, funk, hip-hop, and spoken word, all tied together by the rhythmic heartbeat of the djembe drum.