• Songhoy Blues perform alongside Oliver Mtukudzi, Nakhane Touré, Maya Kamati and others at the Africa Day festival at Johannesburg’s Mary Fitzgerald Square in Newtown on May 28. Tickets R210 from Ticket Pro. They also perform at the Zafiko festival in Du
Mali, the project followed up on previous excursions into the continent by Albarn, which had yielded the album Mali Music (2002), a collaboration with artists including Afel Bocoum and Toumani Diabaté, and 2011’s Kinshasa One Two album recorded in the Democratic Republic of Congo over a week.
At the Maison des Jeunes nightclub more than 50 local bands auditioned in what Zinner described to Mojo magazine as “a bit like an American Idol thing”.
Aliou says their biggest challenge at the gig was “to be recognised”. They were, and Soubour, produced by Zinner, emerged as the anthemic track for Western audiences off the Maison des Jeunes album. Songhoy Blues featured alongside Adama Koita, the Lobi Traoré Band and several others on the 11-track album released that year.
Aliou describes working with Albarn and Zinner, who would go on to produce the band’s debut album, Music in Exile, as “very, very easy”.
According to Aliou, the recording process of Soubour for the Maison album went something like this: “Nick says ‘Yeah, I want to do something with these guys, I like their music’. We say ‘OK, it’s fine.’ And the next day he brings us to Ali Farka Touré’s [old] studio in Bamako and we recorded our first track called Soubour with Nick Zinner and the guitar player of Damon. We tried first time and the second time we recorded straight away, live! Nick says: ‘Yeah. That is good.’ ” liou says the band were never fearful of musical appropriation when working with Zinner and Albarn, describing them as “generous” musicians: “Nick is a very simple person. When we started working together in the studio, they just asked us to play what we want, and we played something and they take a guitar and they play with us. They never asked us to do this or that, they just asked us to play what we want and they played with us.”
After the Africa Express project, Songhoy Blues returned to Bamako’s nightclub scene, lifting spirits on the dance floor, questioning the political situation and pining for home. Then Albarn called in 2014, inviting them to support him at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
Aliou admits that the band didn’t know that Albarn was “this amazing rock star” until they got chatting to a commuter on the London Underground who marvelled at a photograph of the group with him.
Or that they were about to be catapulted towards their own international stardom. After London, the band went on to tour internationally, supporting the Alabama Shakes on their US tour, gigging through the European summer festivals and releasing Music in Exile. Their mission, according to Aliou, remains conscientising Malians and international audiences about what is happening in their country. But it is also about bringing a “smile, light and life” to people.
And as for religion and conflict, Aliou says often people “confuse the war between culture and the war between religion. A lot of the time these wars are not wars between religions at all. It’s a political war, a cultural war, it’s not about religion.
“Religion is the most private thing for people. It’s for yourself,” he says. “I am not Muslim for someone else, even for my mum and dad. I am not a Muslim for some tribe, I am Muslim for my relation between me and my God. I don’t give a shit about jihad or anything else because I don’t want to talk about someone else . . .
“Difference is what makes the world beautiful. It’s like the salt and the different spices that you put to make a good sauce. For me religion is very private and everyone has a choice to practise the religion that you want. My religion is private because no one can talk between someone and God. Only you, yourself, know your relation with your God.”