Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba - "Mali Koori". I can tell you what I know about this record, Jama Ko. Mainly that my friend the producer Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Silver Mt Zion, Wolf Parade) flew from Montreal to Mali to record it. He was so nervous before he visited; he is sometimes a nervous guy. It was March 2012. He landed and they started recording and then a war broke out. Bassekou Kouyate is a super-star in Mali, a kind of Michael Jackson, the world's best n'goni player. The war began when Amadou Toumani Touré, Mali's president, was deposed on 22 March 2012. Touré and Kouyaté are friends. So, listen: this isn't safe music. I don't understand the words, and you probably don't, but this isn't safe. This is frightened music. This is angry music. This is steadfast and ferocious music. These are real microphones in a real room and some musicians are singing and playing. They are in Bamako. Outside the window there are birds, and people, and further away there is smoke, and there is gunfire, and there is a bare sky. The night they recorded "Mali Koori", these musicians went home and maybe they kept on hearing the music, the song's dry hook, while they wondered about their country. While they wondered and worried about their country, their family, their friends, this terrible and arbitrary planet. This track is a document - a recording of events, of movements, that took place. And it is also a song, a piece of art. It is vivacious and beautiful. It is free and flying. It is an unconceding blues. [buy]