Category: Songhoy Blues

TalkingGig: Songhoy Blues

Songhoy Blues in Bamako, 2014 Photo: Andy Morgan

TalkingGigs marry stripped down musical performance with conversation, stories, lyrics, anecdotes, images and video – a kind of musical theatre that engaging, insightful and entertaining.

Songhoy Blues in Laffiabougou, Bamako, Mali, 2014 (L-R Garba, Nat, Ali, Oumar). Photo: Andy Morgan

My 2014 photoshoot of Songhoy Blues in the Laffiabougou district of the Malian capital, Bamako, which yielding the cover shot of their hit debut ‘Music in Exile’.

Garba Touré and his guitar were a familiar sight on the streets of Diré, a dusty town on the banks on the Niger River, upstream from Timbuktu. But when armed jihadists took control of northern Mali in the spring of 2012, he knew it was time to leave.