“Our music naturally has very few solos,” Touré explains. This is music without embellishment, the very essence of Songhoy. It’s relentless, mesmerising, and the voice and the commentary of the ngoni revolve around it. That paring-back to the bare bones gave the musicians space to create what Touré calls “a communion between the instruments.” As always, the groove is the foundation, the circling, mesmerising riffs of Touré’s guitar and the heartbeat rhythm of the calabash. The only addition on a few tracks was harmonica, but that wasn’t “so far from the traditional fiddle sound we used to have on some albums, it accompanies the music in the very same way.” The result captures the lean tautness of the sound. With his bass player having moved to the US, it was a stripped-down combo of guitar, ngoni, calabash and other percussion that entered the studio to record Binga. This isn’t an influence, it’s my natural style.” “I wanted to put them in the forefront, to go back to something more natural and closer to the band on stage, to show how we really are. With Binga, Touré has made sure those roots show proud and strong. This is my region and it felt right to name this album after it. Even if it’s complicated or dangerous to travel to the north now, it’s still my homeland and always will be. “I went to Bamako in my youth to find some work and help my family. This is where guitarist and singer Samba Touré grew up, and it still owns his heart – Binga is the title of his fourth Glitterbeat album. Binga is the region that encompasses the vast space below the Saharan desert in Mali. People called it the city of gold, known across the world as a centre of culture and learning.īut there’s another place that lies a little under a hundred kilometres south of that history, one whose name few people know. It stretched across the entire western Sahel, famed for the glory that was Timbuktu.

Hopes for better days.ĭuring the 15 th and 16 th centuries the Songhoy people ruled the largest empire in Africa. The legendary Malian singer/guitarist returns with his most personal and immersive album to date. Intimately recorded with a small band, “Binga” dives deep into Samba’s Songhoy roots.

Samba music artists