Luka Prod - New Track Luka Productions, known around here for his Fasokan LP and renowned in Mali for a prolific output of contemporary Malian Hip Hop is back in the studio on a new project. Bringing in a group of musicians, ngoni, guitar, percussion, synth, and computer, it's very…
The new music video for Ami Yerewolo's "A San Nièfai" takes Malian Hip Hop into a science fiction future. In the video, a trio of post apocalyptic survivors wander through the Malian countryside, stumbling on the destroyed and smoking ruin of the capital. Meanwhile, they are pursued by a vehicular…
In 2015, I had the opportunity to work on a bit of a dream project entitled Uchronia, an exhibition and recording lying somewhere between conceptual art and experimental ethnography. The process was a series of collaborative "fake" ethnographies (or ethnographic forgeries) - a very flagrant self conscious expression in a…
For sometime I'd been on an elusive search for the West African metal musicians. It appeared that metal didn't exist the Sahel. Enter Shine. Band leader Daouda Dao is a professor at the Arts Conservatory of Bamako. It's Bamako's art school, with active theater courses, plastic arts, visual arts, and…
DJ Sandji started djing years ago with cassette decks. He now uses a combination of CDJs, Virtual DJ, and a sampler. The sampler seems to always use the same kit - the one with the whistles and claps, which has evolved to be a signature element of Balani Show (Sandji…
photo by Maciek Pozoga In June 2015, we traveled to a place that doesn't exist. The work was semi-ethnographic documentation of travel to a fictional Bamako. Over 10 days, photographer Maciek Pozoga and I meticulously documented the real and the unreal through photo and sound. The imagined capital evolved out…