CALL TO ARMS

THERE’S a storm in Bamako. It’s the rainy season, the streets are flooding and the desert roads are becoming impassable. Even the internet is taking a hit.

“There’s not much Covid-19 here, just a lot of rain,” says Oumar Touré, bassist in Songhoy Blues, as he reappears on screen after again losing the connection to our Zoom chat. Despite the downpour, though, and the not-inconsequential matter of a military coup this summer, singer and guitarist Ali Touré reckons that, in some ways, Bamako’s in better shape than the rest of the world right now.

“We can play little shows here,” he says. “On October 23, the day our album comes out, we’ll have a show at the Institut Français. It’s a 650-capacity venue, and we sold it out – it’s gonna be the biggest gig since coronavirus.”

The record the group will celebrate is their third – Optimisme, their heaviest, most electric and most socially conscious album yet. To make it, they headed to Brooklyn straight after an American tour to work with producer Matt Sweeney, guitarist and sometime collaborator with Stephen Malkmus, Iggy Pop and Will Oldham. During six days they spent in the studio, Sweeney pushed them to new heights of intensity, urging them to increase the songs’ tempos and the ferocity of their playing.

“As far as I’m concerned, they’re the best band in the world,” says Sweeney. “I keep on thinking about how powerful this music is – this is rock music played on electric guitars, a version of music that’s existed for 60 years or more. But it’s so much more powerful, I think, than most other bands, just because of what the message is and what it takes for them to make this music. Anybody that wants to hear something that has soul and passion and energy, some intense fucking music with real feeling, this is it.”

“MALI WAS BUILT WITH MUSIC. THEY GREW TOGETHER”ALIOU TOURÉ