How do you bounce back from having your laptop and hard drives - with an entire unreleased album on them - stolen a year back?
"You never bounce back from that, man. It wasn't just my album it was four years' worth of all my other work too. There's not a night that passes when that doesn't still sting. You move forward and you make new records but I've honestly never been more devastated."
Hard-rocking desert pickers for peace and justice
April 2, 2013 Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba: Jama Ko (Out Here)
I swear I thought the third album by Youssou N'Dour's ngoni man ofchoice might be the best ever to come out of Mali even before I got tothe notes. There I learned that recording began on the day Kouyate'sfriend the president was overthrown by the military, and that twosongs celebrate anti-Islamist heroes of 19th-century Mali--a martyrwhose refusal to leave his animist faith inspired his Muslim protectorto fight to his own death for it and a soldier who drank beer in thesanctimonious face of the Muslim cheikh who'd persuaded him to fightfor a faith he refused to obey to the letter. From the title partyanthem on out, the mood and message are inclusive not just becausesharia law proscribes music altogether but because Timbuktuanti-clericalist Khaira Arby gets a track, because the Taj Mahal cameois the most irreverent Malian blues ever recorded, because every songis fired by Kouyate's political and philosophical passion. Twomelodies reach back centuries. Strong-voiced frontwoman Amy Sackodelivers the word. And although the ngoni is a mere lute, Kouyate getsmore noises you want to hear out of his strings than any two jam-bandhotshots you can name. A