Althea SullyCole grew up in the greater New York City region. She received a B.A. in Ethnomusicology at Barnard College, Columbia University in 2012 and an M.A. with Distinction in Music in Development at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 2016. She has worked with a number of hip hop, afrobeat, jazz, fusion and dance ensembles as a singer, guitarist and korist. She has also worked in live music and radio programing (Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and WKCR, respectively, among others), in addition to a number of educational and archiving projects (Assocation for Cultural Equity, International School of Dakar, Musée de Thies, among others). Her research pertains to music and language in the Mandé region of West Africa, with a special emphasis on the kora, a 21-stringed harp she has studied for 7 years in Dakar, Senegal and abroad.