Lisa Feder is an American cultural anthropologist based in France specialising in embodied practice. Her book, entitled “Jeliya at the Crossroads” (Palgrave Press 2021), describes the West African culture of jeliya, a musical and verbal art from the Mande region of West Africa. Using an embodied practice as her methodology, Lisa reveals how she and her music teachers live “in between” local and global cultures. Through deepening friendships with balafon teachers, the author learns to embody West African values such as patience, courage, concentration, and generosity, qualities that she also learns in her Buddhist practice. Both of these roads lead to the same result: the sculpting of a more graceful and integrated human being. Lisa is the founder of Manding Grooves, a French-based company that organises balafon workshops and makes video content that supports cross-cultural learning through music in Africa, the US, and France.