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  Former member of Youssou N'Dour band, Vieux Diop aka Alioune Diop, is akorafolá A korafolá is a kora player in mandinka (who is able to make the kora talk) - korafolálu, plural. and percussionist from Senegal, well known in world music ; he has also toured with African percussionist Babatunde Olatunji and jazz musicians Jean Paul Borelli and Roy Brooks. Since he emigrated to U.S.A. in 1984, Diop has lectured and performed at colleges and universities including Juilliard School (New York), which was the site of a weekly series, West African Journey, that he hosted in 1996.
Diop serves as host of a biweekly radio show on world music, Musical Conversations, broadcast by New York radio station, WBAI-FM. As his music is still rooted in West Africa traditions, Diop has increasingly incorporated contemporary roots music influences. Cash Box told that Diop « ...serves up bobbing, weaving, grooves that are undeniable to the human pulse. »
Nowadays, he is working as kora high degree master teacher at the Juilliard's High School, and he recorded a fruitful musical interbreeding album, untitled Via Jo, with great world music artists, like Omar Faruk Tekbilek.
Multi-instrumentist (he plays also jembe and xalam) and speaking many languages (he sings in Malinke, Wolof, French and English), Vieux Diop plays with the finest and precious kora plucking touch, particulary appreciated by Casamance kora players.
His interpretations of the traditional Manding folksongs, are very fresh and subtle : listen, for example, to his version of Manssana Cisse.
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