Songhoy Blues - Optimisme

 

 

It’s impossible to separate Songhoy Blues and politics. Formed in 2012 as a direct result of being forced from their homes, after rebel jihadists took control of northern Mali and outlawed all music, the band were refugees in their own land when they attempted to start new lives in the capital city of Bamako, down in the south. They took their name from the centuries-old ethnic group they belonged to, just as their music was conceived as a desert blues celebration of a displaced culture.

A guest slot on Maison Des Jeunes, from Damon Albarn’s Africa Express, led to their aptly titled 2015 debut, Music In Exile, which coincided with an appearance in They Will Have To Kill Us First, an award-winning documentary about Malian musicians’ struggle to be heard during the crisis. Amid fluctuating levels of civil war, Résistance followed two years later. The arrival of Optimisme comes in the wake of an insurgent summer, when a military coup seized power from President Keita.

As the title implies, Optimisme finds Songhoy Blues tackling adversity and national unrest with a generous dollop of positivity. The anger may be palpable, but they don’t go in for bitter polemic. Instead the quartet – frontman Aliou Touré, guitarist Garba Touré, bass player Oumar Touré (none of whom are related, incidentally) and new drummer Drissa Koné – choose to spread the message via impossibly infectious grooves and an exhilarating sense of forward motion.

This is partly down to producer Matt Sweeney, leader of math-rockers Chavez and sometime Bonnie “Prince” Billy collaborator. Reprising his role from last year’s “Meet Me In The City” EP, Sweeney urged the band to replicate the dynamic intensity of their live shows, recording the album over the course of a week in Brooklyn, at the back end of a US tour.

Stylistically, Optimisme is a bubbling conflux of West African polyrhythms and elastic guitar rock. A more concentrated vision than Résistance, which found space for R&B and fanfares of brass, at times it hits harder and heavier than anything they’ve attempted before. “Badala” (rough translation: ‘We Don’t Give A Shit’) certainly fulfils its intention, hurtling along like something from late-’70s Thin Lizzy. “Korfo” (‘Chains’) comes at it from a different angle, all blended vocals and an ear-bending melody, before transforming itself into an unstoppable rock beast. As the son of Ali Farka Touré’s old percussionist Oumar Touré, Garba Touré lives up to his musical pedigree with some vigour, either locking into a trebly vamp or, as on “Worry” or “Dournia” (‘Life’), a seriously shreddy solo.

Other songs feel more distinctly Malian in form. “Assadja” and “Fey Fey”, for instance, are each carried by liquid grooves that beg you to shake a hip, further animated by surging beats and Aliou Touré’s agile vocals. Most of these tunes are delivered in Songhai, though there’s the odd excursion into colonial French and, for the first time, English, in the shape of “Worry”. The song is aimed at the younger generation in Mali, in particular the need to keep self-possessed and hopeful amid so much civil turbulence. “There is a long way to go/There is a long journey,” sings Aliou Touré, more in encouragement than despair. “Keep fighting today.”

The more ingrained aspects of cultural tradition are addressed on several songs about women’s rights. “Gabi” (‘Strength’) calls for an end to arranged marriages, told from the viewpoint of a reluctant bride-to-be trying to reason with her parents: “Let me tell you that our generation is different from yours… Let me choose the one I want.” Similarly, the thunderous noise of “Badala” reflects its protagonist’s decision to break free from the patriarchy and shape her own future.

These themes feed into wider questions of national identity. The warrior meaning behind “Assadja” relates to a person’s willingness to contribute to society. “Fey Fey” (‘Division’) recognises the various factions looking to separate Mali, but urges ethnic communities to stick together, just as they have done for centuries: “Even at the cost of our blood or our soul/We are not going to give in to the division of Mali.” By the same token, “Barre” (‘Change’) finds Songhoy Blues concluding that the key to their country’s future lies with its youth. Corruption and injustice may have become the norm, but “change is essential for development”. Over loose funk licks and percussive harmonies, the band’s mission is unequivocal: “Youth! Let’s rise for this change!” As protest music goes, Songhoy Blues are intent on mobilising hearts and minds in their own inimitable way, through force of will and sheer exuberance.

uncut.co.uk 

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An exciting blend of Malian rhythms and rock‘n’roll, Optimisme is a reminder of music’s power to transcend both national and linguistic boundaries. It boasts searing guitar licks, powerhouse percussion and multiple languages, But Songhoy Blues are political to the marrow.

The record opens with a bang, thanks to the ferocious ‘Badala’, a healthy dose of hard rock that screams of a desire to break free from the constraints of oppression. The theme of striving for freedom is ingrained within the group, comprised of refugees from a country divided by war and ideology. It sets the stage for a record that embraces the high energy of live rock. The blues-inspired chord progressions are combined with infectious guitar solos, modernising the sounds of classic rock with a unique global influence. Every layer is tightly controlled, yet feels carefree in its enthralling exploration of a kind of modern punk.

Optimisme offers some moments of mild solace between its hardest-hitters, bringing together elements of psychedelic funk and desert blues. ‘Worry’, the only English track on the record, offers a message of hope – an important note, in a world that’s been consumed by existential anxiety. The vocals – showcasing a distinctly African style of singing, involving an astounding level of voice control – are entrancing no matter what language the lyrics are being sung in. The voice becomes yet another instrument within the band’s marvellously layered collection of eclectic sounds. Above all else, Optimisme feels urgent. Songhoy Blues’ unique desert blues herald a new future beyond the sonic constraints of the classics.

hotpress.com 

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If you come to the third Songhoy Blues record thinking this is going to be more of that instantly recognisable granola/Birkenstocks/family friendly ‘World Music’ you think you know from Paul Simon or the WOMAD festival, you might want to take a seat and strap in, because things are about to get really unstable really quickly: Optimisme is more Garageland than Graceland in its approach.

The aggressive drums that herald opening track Badala allude to Dave Grohl’s killer intro on Nirvana’s Stay Away, while the guitar riffs, steeped in the Western blues tradition of Led Zeppelin’s back catalogue, lash out with a malevolence reticent of teenage favourites like Rage Against The Machine and Papa Roach.

It’s not until the vocals come in, sung and screamed as they are in the group’s native Songhai, that you remember this quartet of young rock warriors hail from the scorched landscape of war stricken Mali, not the dank factories and garages of Detroit or Chicago. That exposure to conflict, impoverishment and discontent means the optimism the Timbuktu outfit infer in the title doesn’t appear to be present initially, especially in the song’s chorus, which roughly translates, as “We don’t give a shit”.

Their flammable classic debut five years ago was produced by Nick Zinner; he of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and to keep that indie rock light alive, they’ve recruited the dexterous hand of Chavez’s Matt Sweeney for this effort. It is the sound of turmoil and transitional surroundings. On tracks like Assadja, Sweeney has wrapped their signature urgent but elusively filigree guitar work around the foregrounded drums, letting them take root, rather than have them bouncing off one another.

Both the funk stomper Bon Bon and the highlife inspired Fey Fey feature jumpy guitar signatures that John Frusciante would be proud of, and the tracks Bare and Korfo foam and twist like dust storms carried across the breeze. Worry, the albums sole track sung in the English language, begins with the near saccharine positivity of early Beatles quickly giving way to a coda reminiscent of late ’70s John Lennon, a man at his most politically defiant, with the lyric morphing from “don’t worry, you’re going to be happy” to a pleading chorus of “Keep fighting today”.

It can be draining having to fight all the time and on Pour Toi and the album closer Kouma, the closest you’ll probably ever get to an acoustic number from Songhoy Blues, you start to see signs of them pursuing a little calm into their world, and all that frustration and exuberance that’s become their trademark, live and on record, is replaced with tiny sparks of hopefulness.

musicomh.com

 

 

 

Songhoy Blues - Résistance

You’ve got to applaud a band who go above and beyond just to be able to write, play and record their own songs. After guitarist Garba Touré’s home in northern Mali was occupied by jihadists with a violent hatred of music, he fled south to Bamako, the capital, and formed Songhoy Blues with three other musicians.

It is no wonder, then, that ‘Bamako’, the second track on their second studio album, Résistance, is so full of life. This is the place they sought solace, and you can hear it. It’s a song about having a good night out in a town full of energy, and it’s a track that kicks back with brass bursts on odd riffs, adding to the already swelling funked-up guitar line, the stalwart of this band’s sound.

When Damon Albarn’s Africa Express musical project came to Bamako, Songhoy Blues auditioned and were picked to contribute a track to a compilation album, working with Nick Zinner, guitarist of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. They named their first album Music in Exile, a sure-fire description of the band’s dangerous beginnings and an indication of where the anti-music terror of northern Mali had taken them – far from their home.
It then took them on successful tours all around the world. If Résistance stands for something different from that first record, it is the sound of the band continuing to fight back. Music is their form of resistance, and the joy of their sound, as well as the plethora of musical influences they picked up on tour, embody their defiance in never allowing something as life-affirming as music to be taken from them.

The communal spirit lives on. The nature of this music is the expanding joy and its danceable nature – it’s no wonder others want to get in on the act. Notable collaborations on this record come from punk-rock legend Iggy Pop, as well as South London grime artist Elf Kid. At the beginning of ‘Sahara’ is Iggy Pop shouting a somewhat unnecessary “We’re going to the Sahara, baby”, before half-singing, half-speaking “It’s a genuine culture / No Kentucky-fried chicken.” It’s a ridiculous line, made all the more prominent with it being one of the record’s very few lines in English, but you have to imagine it all being said with a smile, from Iggy and the band alike. The track is saved by a wonderfully incessant guitar groove which breaks down into a cutting psych-rock jam, heralded by a funk which resonates throughout the record, continuing with no sense of stopping through slower numbers like ‘Hometown’ and ‘One Colour’, where even a children’s choir doesn’t diminish from the undeniable groove of this band.

Elf Kid’s verse on ‘Mali Nord’ is lyrically typical of the South London grime scene. You could argue that this Lewisham youth has few problems compared to the genuine risk of losing your hands if you are caught playing music, a very real risk once faced by the members of Songhoy Blues. But hearing the voice of a young rapper alert to the problems of asylum-seeking is reassuring. It also seems to point in just the direction the Songhoy boys are after: of varying people from any background coming together simply to play music.

It’s a music difficult to neatly categorise (as much of the best music often is) and western listeners should be careful not to generalise. Any notion of ‘desert music’, associated with the legendary Sahara stalwarts Tinariwen, doesn’t quite fit here. The musicians may all be from Western Africa with similar back-stories of having escaped troubles in their homelands, but where Tinariwen take a back-seat groove approach, Songhoy Blues are their younger, faster champions, with a far fuller pocket of energy. This quartet are very much a pop guitar band, borrowing from American blues icons like the Jimi Hendrix or John Lee Hooker they spent their teenage years stuck on, or Talking Heads' Remain in Light, which, itself, took inspiration from Western African music.

Traditional African influences come to the surface in the spirit with which frontman Aliou Touré sings in a loving call-and-response style with his bandmates. Short solos for fiddle bring tracks like ‘Hometown’ back to the roots of what this kind of ‘folk’ music – in its very original sense, meaning music of the people, of ordinary, acoustic instruments – is about. Elsewhere, handheld percussion cuts through the chorus of ‘Yersi Yadda’, competing with the Western drum kit, but even keener to stick to the slinky guitar riff it emulates.

Where British guitar bands like the Arctic Monkeys have failed in enabling their audiences to dance in any way more stylised than an up-down jump, this guitar band play songs you could very nearly jive to, partner in hand.

drownedinsound.com

“Without patience, nothing is possible”

Garba Touré and his guitar were a familiar sight on the streets of Diré, a dusty town on the banks on the Niger River, upstream from Timbuktu. But when armed jihadists took control of northern Mali in the spring of 2012, he knew it was time to leave.

“The first rebel group to arrive were the MNLA, but they weren’t against music, so there was no bad feeling between them and the population,” he tells me over the phone from the Malian capital Bamako. “But then Ansar Dine [‘Followers of the Faith’ – a local armed Islamist group] came and chased them out. They ordered people to stop smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol and playing music. Even though I don’t smoke or drink, I love the guitar, so I thought, ‘this isn’t the moment to hang around. I have to go south.’”

Like many other thousands of refugees, Garba grabbed a bag, his guitar and boarded a bus to Bamako. His father, Oumar Toure, a famous musician who had played congas for Mali’s guitar legend, Ali Farka Toure, stayed behind with the family. The hard line Islamist gunmen drove music underground. The penalties for playing or even just listening to it on your mobile were a public whipping, a stint in an overcrowded jail or worse.

“When I arrived in Bamako the mood wasn’t great,” Garba remembers, “Different army factions were fighting each other. There were guns everywhere. All we heard was the scream of weapons. We weren’t used to that.”

Garba and some other musician friends from the north decided they couldn’t succumb to the feeling that their lives had been shipwrecked by the crisis. They had to form a band, if for no other reason than to boost the morale of other refugees like them. “We wanted to recreate that lost ambiance of the north and make all the refugees relive those northern songs.”

That’s how Songhoy Blues was born. ‘Songhoy’ because Garba Toure, lead vocalist Aliou Toure and second guitarist Oumar Toure, although unrelated to each other – ‘Toure’ is the equivalent of ‘Smith’ or ‘Jones’ northern Mali – all belong to the Songhoy people, one of the main ethnicities in the north. And ‘Blues’, not only because northern Mali is the cradle of the blues and its music is often referred to as ‘the desert blues’, but also because Garba and his mates are obsessed by that distant American cousin of their own blues. “My father used to make me listen to Jimi Hendrix. He’s one of my idols. But I also listen BB King and John Lee Hooker a lot.”

After signing up drummer Nathanael Dembélé from the local conservatoire, Songhoy Blues hit the Bamako club and maquis (a kind of local spit ‘n’ grit bar restaurant) circuit with their raucous guitar anthems dedicated to peace and reconciliation. People flocked to see them, not only fellow Songhoy, but also Touareg and other northern ethnicities. Even southerners came.

Anybody familiar with the enmity between the Songhoy and Touareg peoples left behind by Mali’s recent civil war will appreciate the how inspiring it must have been to see Touareg and Songhoy youth wigging out together in a Bamako bar.

Last September, an uncle told Garba that a group of European and American musicians and producers were coming to town under the banner of Africa Express. Garba called Marc-Antoine Moreau, one of the Africa Express organisers and, after passing an informal audition, Songhoy Blues were introduced to Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, whose surname Garba pronounces Zeiner.

“Marco told us that Nick was a big American guitarist and asked us to collaborate with him. So the next day we went into the studio and did some takes with Nick. Everything went well, no problem. He’s a very simple person; a great guitarist but really modest.” The word simple is just about the greatest compliment a Malian can pay to another person. In the Malian French patois it means honest, down-to-earth and solid as a rock.

“We just walked into the studio not knowing what to expect,” Zinner recalls. “There was just one amp between all of us, so it was like ‘What are we gonna do here?’ But then they showed up, sat down, said ‘hi’, and thirty seconds later they were playing music, amazing music.”

One result of these sessions a track called ‘Soubour’ which means ‘patience’. “We’re asking the refugees to have patience,” Garba explains. “Without patience, nothing is possible.” A video of ‘Sobour’ featuring Zinner and friends has now gone viral. Is the rawest, spikiest and most electrifying dollop of desert r’n’b you’re likely to hear this year or next, but it remains proudly Malian and African.

Working with musicians who had just seen music outlawed in their homeland was humbling experience for Zinner. “It’s impossible for a westerner like myself to imagine it,” he says. “Like, truly unfathomable. And knowing the reasons why a lot of the musicians that we were working and hanging out with had come to Bamako really added another dimension to the whole experience. Like…a real intensity.”

Like the great majority of Malian Muslims, Garba has no truck with hard line Salafist attitudes to music. “The world without music? It would be like a prison, right?,” he says. “Music causes no harm and what’s more you can educate an entire population using music. Maybe in previous generations, music could have been condemned by religion, but not now.”

Africa Express has invited Songhoy Blues to London to appear at the launch of Maison des Jeunes (Transgressive), the album of recordings made last October during the Bamako trip. Songhoy Blues and other emerging Malian talents, like the seraphim-voiced Kankou Kouyate, who is also appearing at the launch, feature alongside Damon Albarn, Brian Eno, Ghostpoet, Nick Zinner and an eclectic mix of other artists and producers. To Garba and his fellow band-members, the whole experience has been like a dream that dropped out of a deep blue African sky.

“There we were living in the north,” he says. “We were told that if we played music we could get our hands chopped off. Then we arrived in Bamako, in a state of emergency. We had to go to the Ministry of the Interior to ask for permission to play. But then, by the grace of God, the atmosphere returned. Africa Express came and we were invited to play in London. Really and truly, it’s an explosive joy for us, an explosive joy! We can’t even begin to explain that joy.”

andymorganwrites.com 

From Mali: Songhoy Blues ... an interview

Originally published @ TheQuietus.com

The Malian four-piece formed after fleeing from the north of the country when it was taken over by Islamist militants in 2012. Three years on, they tell Richie Troughton about combining blues with their native Songhai music on debut album, Music In Exile.

Since being discovered in a Bamako club, having gained a reputation as one of the Malian capital's most exciting live acts, the last 12 months have been a whirlwind ride for Songhoy Blues. In that time the group have featured on an Africa Express compilation, recorded their debut album with Yeah Yeah Yeahs' guitarist Nick Zinner producing, and recently played at the 5,000-capacity Royal Albert Hall, supporting Damon Albarn. It's a remarkable chain of events for the group, who formed after being forced to flee northern Mali following the spring 2012 arrival of Islamist militants under whom music was forbidden as they enforced sharia law. The musicians were forced to leave home to avoid the threat of beatings or of having their instruments confiscated or smashed, and found themselves in the right place at the right time when they started playing music together, having relocated.

Vocalist Aliou Touré, guitarist Garba Touré (whose father played guitar and then percussion in Ali Farka Touré's band) and bassist Oumar Touré had lived and grown up in Gao and Timbuktu respectively, and were studying and playing music prior to the invasion of jihadists. Although they didn't know each other previously (they are not related), having made the 15-hour bus ride south to Bamako the trio met and teamed up with Bamako-based drummer Nathanael Dembélé. Although a dominant force in the Sahel region of northern Mali up to the 16th century, today the Songhai people make up around 6% of the country's population. Songhoy Blues formed to play and keep alive the Songhai music from the north, for themselves and other refugees displaced by the ongoing problems. They soon found their audience was not just made up of Songhai people in the area, but also Tuareg, Bambara and others, who all united at early performances.

Late last year the group were spotted in a Bamako nightspot by Marc-Antoine Moreau, who was on a scouting mission for artists to appear on last year's Africa Express compilation Maison Des Jeunes (which would have featured their track 'Soubour'). Marc is now managing the group and, with Nick Zinner, co-produced Songhoy Blues' debut album, Music In Exile. In addition to recent UK dates the group also visited India for a string of festival appearances and are featured in a new Kickstarter-funded film on the current plight of musicians in Mali, They Will Have To Kill Us First: Malian Musicians In Exile.

Ahead of their biggest show to date at the Royal Albert Hall the group had a low-key warm-up gig at private members' bar The King's Head in east London, where the basement live room can barely hold 100 people. When we spoke before the show Marc said: "The thing with Songhoy Blues, what I really found when I saw them first was I saw a rock band. I hadn't seen an African act, I saw a rock band. They are all taking decisions together. They are totally like a rock band coming from Manchester or Glasgow going out of school and that is a good thing, an interesting thing. And also, the way we worked, we tried to develop this project, we tried to avoid totally the 'world music' scene. We want to consider them as a regular rock band as the two other bands who are going to play tonight."

As Songhoy Blues blast through the bulk of their new record that night it is clear what Marc means. They really rock, playing with a passion that transfers to the audience, as heads nod and hips inevitably give way to shaking to the slinky grooves. Although one of their slower numbers, set opener 'Sekou Oumarou' unwinds around call-and-response vocals, as the group ease into their full flow, with 'Nick' rolling on a Canned Heat boogie riff, with some dramatic breakdowns. Garba's sinewy guitar playing mixes bluesy riffs with highlife rhythms and hypnotic solos as Oumar and Nat lock into relentless trance-inducing grooves. Frontman Aliou delivers his lines with an emotive intensity and interacts with each band member, with off-mic yells and shoulder strutting dance moves as, track by track, the group build and build their intertwining polyrhythmic sounds to frenetic levels.
By the final two numbers, forthcoming single 'Al Hassidi Terei' and 'Soubour' there is a real party atmosphere in the crowded room. As the group are cheered back onstage for an encore, just to make sure you don't forget it, they play 'Al Hassidi Terei' again, so the repeated chorus melody is fully stuck in your head, the track's descending riff an example of why their refreshing sound has been described as 'desert R&B'. Together Songhoy Blues are something else and, having resisted being silenced, the smiles on their faces at the end of the show defy the experiences that brought them together as they are now getting to see the world playing their music.

The music you are playing has a different feel to what listeners here may have heard before from Mali, like Ali Farka Touré - who I know you have connections to and have played his music as well - and then Tuareg bands like Tinariwen and Tamikrest. I've seen it described as 'desert R&B', is that a fair description?

Garba Touré: There are plenty of similarities from Ali Farka Touré for sure, but also from the Tuareg people like Tinariwen. At the same time we have our own influences other than those we were talking about before. If you listen to a track like 'Soubour,' for example, it has nothing to do with Ali Farka, it's nothing to do with Tinariwen. We have set up our own sound - and now when you listen to that it is Songhoy Blues. But if you take another track, like 'Irganda', this is more similar to what Ali Farka could be doing.

Before you came to Bamako, what were your musical projects?

GT: Aliou was working with a band in Gao and I was playing as a guitarist in a band in a town close to Timbuktu, and at the same time we were students, and while we were students we always played music as well. We were playing in different cities in the north, there were plenty of festivals, like Festival au Désert, it was easy to play and I have played there with another band, and then we had to face the problems. After that we had to go to Bamako.

Marc, how did the group come to your attention?

Marc-Antoine Moreau: I was cutting music [in Mali] for the Maison Des Jeunes project, and I went there two weeks before and I went all over Bamako and everywhere. I have known Bamako for over 20 years and a sound engineer, who used to do sound for them in a small bar, talked to me and said, "Oh, you should check out this band, they are from Timbuktu, they are very interesting." And so I went to a bar called Tropicana and the music was amazing, kind of what you are listening to now, blues rock, with that strong influence, and I just really loved it. I am good friends with Nick Zinner and when he arrived to work on the project I was sure that this band was dedicated to work with Nick for sure.

They did one track for the Maison Des Jeunes project and after they came to London for the launch show for the album [at Oval Space in December 2013] and it was really cool. Nick was there and I asked if he was open to going back, and he said yes, and we made the album in April, four months later.

Was there much input from yourself and Nick in the sound?

MAM: It's really what they play. I remember in February we wanted to record all the songs we could as demos before we recorded in April and I sent that to Nick and then we talked together and we decided to go to Bamako to make a selection of the tracks and work with them, but it is basically their stuff. The impact is about a few guitars that Nick has brought into it, and how we treat the song and a few things that we add on top. But it is not an overproduced project, that was not the goal.

Over the last year things have moved really quickly, from playing back home, to coming here and playing with Damon Albarn this weekend at the Royal Albert Hall…

GT: It is fast, but it depends on the competency of the manager!
MAM: But I would say they are so good. And that is the main thing. And it is true that what has happened in one year's time - I met them a year ago - is amazing. But it is also amazing to get a band that is only two years old who has got that element and that efficiency, and it is really them. But for Garba, living in a musical family, hearing Ali Farka every day, and Aliou being really committed to his lyrics and his writing - nothing happens by hazard. And if it goes that quick, it is because they are that good!

Aliou, can you please explain the meaning and message of 'Soubour'?

Aliou Touré: 'Soubour' is about patience. And in life, for all you intend to do, you need patience and you need to be courageous and patient to get what you want. We have been patient and we were all expecting something to come, but we were not imagining that what would come first was a war that has obliged us to go to Bamako, to set up a new band there and meet the people from Africa Express and from there going to now. We were not expecting that even if we were waiting for something to come. So the theme of patience is all about that. There is a proverb: "Do what you need to do and desire will come by itself."

And the new single 'Al Hassidi Terei', can you tell us about that?

AT: It is about selfishness. In Africa, for example, sometimes if things don't move that much sometimes it is because people are a bit selfish, so it's all about that and we try to avoid this. Because it is only all together that things are possible.

The album's closing tracks, 'Mali' and 'Desert Melodie' seem to have a nostalgia for the country as you may want to remember it.

AT: In the track 'Mali', it is really a picture of the country at the moment and I am using the first president of Mali, Modibo Keïta [in office 1960-68], and I am asking what he would think about what Mali has become now. So this is really a picture of what Mali is today, so I would not say it is that optimistic. And 'Desert Melodie' is mainly about the jihadist guys, who don't let us play music and say that if you don't pray you are not a good Muslim man and that you are not allowed to play music. Those people have said that we are not good Muslims, and yet the Tomb of Askia [believed to be the burial place of one of the Songhai Empire's most prolific emperors, Askia Mohammad I] in Gao has existed for ages, for centuries, and this is a Muslim thing, and also the Sidi Yahya Mosque in Timbuktu, these are very strong Muslim things and we cannot hear that we are not good Muslims.

You also feature in the new film, They Will Have To Kill Us First. How did you get involved in that?

GT: After we came to London, Andy Morgan, who is part of Africa Express and a journalist, went to Mali in February with the film crew who were starting this movie. He introduced them to us as they were looking for bands coming from the north and the story of Songhoy Blues fitted in with the way the movie was being made. The question that Aliou is asking in that video is that if there were no wars and no cries then maybe this band would never have existed, so that is a positive thing.

 What is your message now about what is happening in your country when you play to people outside of Mali?

GT: We are here to promote our culture and we want to play our music to the maximum amount of people and we want to show the world that we are Malian music, and within Malian music we are the Songhai music.

Originally published @ 
TheQuietus.com on 27th January 2015

From Mali: Songhoy Blues - Music in Exile

In common with many of their compatriots, the members of Songhoy Blues found the imposition of Sharia law which followed the arrival of Islamist fundamentalist fighters in their hometowns in Northern Mali in 2012, required them to make some fairly urgent and radical decisions about their lives and their music. Garba Touré was advised that there would be dire consequences if he was caught again in public with his guitar. Singer Aliou Touré and bassist Oumar Touré grew up in Gao, a historic trading city on the Niger River, which was selected by the main Touareg rebel movement as the capital of gtheir new and independent state.

None of the three needed a weatherman to tell them which way the wind was blowing and wasted no time in heading south to Bamako, where the decision was taken to play music together, partly to offer a little entertainment to other refugees from the north, and partly as an act of defiance against the imposition of the culturally suppressive and frankly ludicrous ideas that music was sinful and had no place in Mali. To quote Garba, “The world without music? It would be a prison, right?”

Enlisting the services of local drummer Nathanaël Dembélé, himself no stranger to the violence that was already rife in Mali, they threw themselves into Bamako nightlife, playing marathon sets every night: “four hours, ten til two, no breaks”. The band’s break came in September 2013 when, prompted by local studio owner Barou Diallo, Aliou cold-called producer Marc-Antoine Moreau, who was in Bamako scouting for musicians to appear on a compilation album for Damon Albarn’s Africa Express project. An audition followed and the band soon found themselves teamed up with Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) as producer. They recorded the song ‘Soubour’, which ended up as opening track on the 2013 album, Maison des Jeunes, ahead of a number of international gigs. The collaboration with Nick has continued through the recording of their debut album, Music In Exile, which has been released this week.

That first song, ‘Soubour’, is an angular, bluesy groove which gets the album off to a flying start, its polyrhythmic percussion and fiery lead guitar burning with an intensity that echoes its lyric, which translates as a request to refugees from the conflict in the north of Mali to have patience. As Garba explains, “Without patience, nothing is possible”. The chanted vocals of ‘Irganda’ (meaning “our environment”) are interwoven with a hypnotic guitar riff and driven by an irresistible rhythm but, again, this is music which isn’t just for dancing: its lyric is a plea for a greater understanding of the ways in which we are all contributors to climate change and it’s therefore down to all of us to find solutions before it’s too late.

‘Al Hassidi Terei’, the A-side of the first single from the album, is an uptempo shuffle with a call-and-response vocal; it radiates a shimmering heat like an overdriven valve amp, while the accompanying video is a dizzying (and I use the word advisedly!) celebration of the dance which never fails to make me smile. The jittery guitar riffing of ‘Sekou Oumarou’ calls to mind early John Lee Hooker – no surprise when you remember that Malian music had perfected the blues before there even *was* a blues. As the sleeve notes point out, “when Ali or Garba talk about the blues or rock’n’roll, they’re talking about long lost cousins who’ve come back home” and the deceptively lazy, offbeat bass and crisp fingerclicks and handclaps make for one of the album’s highlights at the same time as they remind us of the common roots of all music. Similarly, the electric desert blues of ‘Nick’ welcomes the spirits of Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters back from their 1930s Chicago home in fine style. This is rhythm’n’blues as oldies like me understand it: a solid, dance-your-socks-off groove with no five-octave coloratura soprano vocal range required.

‘Ai Tchere Bele’ is an almost dangerously fast slab of funk, encircled by spindly guitar and powered by a fractiously intricate interplay between the drums and the bass, a brief drop in the middle allowing the vocals centre-stage for a moment before the band returns in a swirling rope of sound to its turn-on-a-sixpence ending. There’s a more stereotypically desert blues to be found in the downtempo ‘Wayei’ although the setting makes a great showcase for Songhoy Blues’ part-time and only female member Poupée’s vocal interplay with Ali, while driving metallic percussion and a wiry riff make space in the trance-y groove for some fluid lead guitar. It’s followed by the acoustic ballad ‘Petit Metier’, a pretty, introspective interlude with Ali’s vocal gymnastics set against Garba’s simple, strummed guitar. The song builds gradually, introducing some emotive ensemble singing over lightly skittering percussion and a spoken-word rap brings it to a satisfying conclusion.

Reverbed clicks and a spiralling riff underpin ‘Jolie’, a stately and measured blues that gathers momentum as the percussion fills out and more voices enter. Heavily treated guitars reflect the vocal harmonies back into the mix before coalescing into precise powerchords behind Poupée’s high and clear voice, which appears like the last rays of the sun through the evening clouds. The major key ‘Desert Melodie’ finds Ali calling for ethnic harmony in the north of Mali over a complex, swaying rhythm filled out with ambient chirps and tweets against a gentle call-and-response vocal arrangement to make an unexpected highlight. The album closes with ‘Mali’, the B-side of ‘Al Hassidi Terei’ and a thoughtful acoustic blues with a heartfelt lyric about belief in one nation, beyond cynicism and hate.

Listening to that last song, it’s interesting to consider – given the immense range of musical styles and sounds that have come out of Mali in recent years – how constant the lyrical theme of unification is; but perhaps this is simply a natural and entirely understandable reaction to seeing one’s homeland ravaged by war and conflict for years on end. What does come across quite strikingly when listening to the album as a whole, is its range, its power – and the sheer love of music which these four young men clearly have. By turns energetic and joyous, tranquil and reflective, Music in Exile looks set to be one of the most well-balanced and optimistic records you’re likely to hear this year.

folkradio.co.uk

This northern Malian quartet first began attracting attention when a song they wrote with Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s appeared on one of Damon Albarn’s Africa Express compilations in 2013. The hard-rocking desert blues of Soubour (co-written with Zinner) proved an infectious blend of loping, looping Malian melody and gruffer American riffs inspired by John Lee Hooker and Jimi Hendrix.

The band (from the Songhoy ethnic group) formed when Islamic extremists banned music in their home town of Timbuktu and they fled to the Malian capital of Bamako. You can hear both the exile’s homesick yearning and the musician’s rebellion in the 11 songs that appear on their debut album.

Produced by Zinner and featuring backing vocals from Albarn, this is 40 minutes of energetic Africa-blues-rock boiled down from the weekly, four-hour sets they play in a tiny club outside the city.

Apparently this club has a seating area, although I can’t imagine anybody remaining seated for terrifically danceable numbers such as Irganda (about global warming) or Nick (which borrows a little of its rolling bassline from Canned Heat’s On the Road Again). They do owe a musical debt to Ali Farka Toure (whose songs they started out covering), but they’re definitely etching out their own groove.

telegraph.co.uk 

When it first gathered recognition outside its roots in Sahara ten or so years ago, Desert Blues provided a tantalisingly alien yet somehow strangely familiar take on the 12-bar business that pretty much any modern music worth listening to has dipped at least its little toe in. For reference, imagine John Lee Hooker’s most intense single-chord boogie vamps slowed down to fit surroundings where water and shade are scarce, with deeply melancholy but defiant lyrics steeped in decades of rebellion, unrest and dislocation.

The style's most renowned practitioners have continued to make great records ever since, but deep adherence to traditional song forms has imbued the proceedings with an unavoidable air of predictability. Until now. Thanks to Tinariwen and Tamikrest, Desert Blues is closely linked with the nomadic Tuareg people. However, Songhoy Blues - who first gained international renown when they opened Africa Express album Maison Des Jeunes - belong to the Malian, once powerful but now marginalised Songhoy ethnic group, which explains the first part of the band's name. The Blues, meanwhile, isn't just a summary of the quartet's musical templates, but also shorthand for their tragic backstory. The four-piece's story is linked to the rise of the Islamist militias, whose reign of terror in the northern parts of Mali forced some members of the band into exile in capital Bamako, where circumstances are tense but at least musicians won't risk having their hands chopped off for plying their trade. This is where the band’s current line-up came together.

Music in Exile manages to turn such a sad starting point into some seriously jubilant sounds. The album is as deeply steeped in traditions as you'd expect from a band with a direct link to no less a deity of Malian music than Ali Farka Toure (guitarist Garba Toure's dad Omar Toure used to be the late, legendary guitarist's percussionist). By injecting the ancient song forms with the cranked-up spirit of the past masters of the electric Blues and some of the rock flash of Jimi Hendrix, however, Songhoy Blues create a distinctly modern and youthful take on the familiar Desert Blues template; equally hypnotic, but infused with the hectic hustle of the city rather than the solemn contemplation and slow paces befitting an endless ocean of burning sand.

Some might credit the energy and emphasis on the groove to producer Nick Zinner (of Yeah Yeah Yeahs) but, apart from a few spots of atmospheric multi-layering and co-authoring the sizzling opener “Soubour”, which combines a call for patience amongst people dislocated by violent unrest with some of the most vibrant, life-affirming sounds you could possibly imagine, with guitar riffs sharp enough to stand in for razors, his presence is barely discernible; the vast majority of Music In Exile features the sparse but richly nuanced sound of a supremely well-oiled band with one foot in ancient traditions and the other firmly in the here and now doing their intoxicating live thing in a room whilst a recorder's switched on.

At its frequent best - most notably the nimble bounce of the indescribably funky “Irganda” - Music In Exile makes you think of a band sufficiently in tune with the hipper end of contemporary music to be inspired by the acts who've drawn influence from the traditions Songhoy Blues are so closely linked to; whether that's actually the case or not, the outcomes remind you of Blues' roots as party and dance music, sounds to drown your sorrows to. Were it not for the translated lyric sheet, you'd be hard-pressed to guess that these songs address the hardships of the exiled, such is the overwhelming joy of the performances.

All of which makes the more reflective moments towards the album all the more affecting. In contrast to the high spirits of, say, the steady-rolling “Nick” (distant relative of Canned Heat’s “On The Road Again”), the closing stages of the album venture nearer to the old ways, with the hushed pair of “Desert Melodie” and “Mali” speaking volumes about the dislocation and homesickness that lurk at the heart of this remarkable, intoxicating record.

thelineofbestfit.com
 

Tracklist

1.   Soubour
2.   Irganda
3.   Al Hassidi Terei
4.   Jolie
5.   Desert Melodie
6.   Mali
7.   Sekou Oumarou
8.   Nick
9.   Al Tchere Bele
10. Wayei
11. Petit Metier