the musical selection of “Le Monde Afrique” #197

Every Friday, The World Africa presents three new musical releases from or inspired by the continent. This week, we’re focusing on musicians from the Sahel – but not only – with new albums from the group Etran de l’Aïr, donso ngoni player Nfaly Diakité and the trio Soba.

“Imouha”, fromEtran of the Aïr

Ready for a trip into the desert in a 4×4 or on the back of a dromedary? Let yourself be carried away by 100 % Sahara Guitar, the third album of Etran de l’Aïr (“The stars of the Aïr”, in Tamacheq, the Aïr being a mountainous region in the north of Niger), which is released this Friday, September 13.

Having played on the local wedding circuit for over twenty-five years, the Agadez quartet formed by the Ibrahim brothers – Moussa and Abdourahamane on guitars, Abdoulaye on bass – and the drummer Alghabid Ghabdouan has managed to bring its Tuareg rock to the international stage without losing any of its identity claims: “Tamacheq is my language, Tifinagh is my writing. My sabre and my lance are part of my history,” he sings in the song Imouha.

“Mogote Diabeye”, de Nfaly Diakite

Change of universe with Nfaly Diakité, whose first album, Hunter Folk Vol 1: Tribute to Toumani Koné (to be released on September 27), immerses us in the world of “pig,” Bambara animist hunters in Mali. Born in 1989 in Bamako, the singer and musician is a specialist in the donso ngoni, a kind of eight-stringed harp made of antelope skin characteristic of the community from which he comes.

Having been with the group BKO, Nfaly Diakité delivers here nine stripped down but nevertheless hypnotic tracks, like the song Mogote Diabeye (which can be translated as “you can’t please everyone”), a classic from the folk repertoire of the hunters of Wassoulou (south) written by the poet and storyteller Toumani Koné, to whom this opus is dedicated.

« Tounga », from Soba

Go back to the source of the blues by following in the footsteps of the American pioneer William Christopher Handy (1873-1958) as well as those of the Malian Ali Farka Touré (1939-2006) along the Mississippi and Niger rivers. This is the ambition of the trio Soba (“The big house” in Dioula), which brings together the Burkinabe singer and guitarist Moussa Koïta, the Congolese drummer Emile Biayenda and the French harmonica player Vincent Bucher.

The result is in one word, film, name of the album to be released on October 11. In the meantime, a first extract, improvised in the studio, is already available: it is the track Position (“The Adventure”), a “meditation on the nostalgia of exiles” who tells the “difficulties adapting to a country that is not one’s own.”