With The Gotan Project, Christoph Müller and Eduardo Makaroff turned tango on its head. Now they’re doing it again, with the Plaza Francia Orchestra
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An extract from my book Blick Bassy ‘1958’
TARAGALTE FESTIVAL – Dreaming of a better Sahara
SOUAD MASSI – What can Ibn Arabi do against Daesh?
PHOTO ESSAY: Songhoy Blues in Bamako
BOMBINO – Revving up beyond the sand
What’s more extraordinary however is Bombino’s fame at home. He’s become a bona fide head-turning airtime-hogging star in his own country, not just amongst the Touareg, who mainly live in Niger’s northern deserts, but amongst the youth of the entire nation. That’s something that no other Touareg artists has ever managed to do, not even Tinariwen.
SONGHOY BLUES – “Without patience, nothing is possible”
TINARIWEN – Guitar poets in Nueva York
FESTIVAL ON THE NIGER 2014 – Ghostboy and me
Last year, the Festival on the Niger had been cancelled at the last minute. French transport planes full of soldiers and hardware had landed in Bamako only two weeks before the festival was due to start. Now peace was back. So was music. The jihadists tried to ban all music except Quranic chanting in the north of Mali. But it just came back like Whack-a-mole. How could it not?