Sidi Touré

Après "Sahel folk" sorti en 2011, le songwriter-guitariste malien Sidi Touré revient avec un troisième album "Koïma". Représentant discret du blues songhaï, l'artiste continue de développer sa musique mélange de musique traditionnelle (le takamba musique de danse de Gao), de rock, de blues et teintée de religion.
Sidi Touré © Radio France



Sidi Touré est originaire de la ville de Gao au nord du Mali. Longtemps l'artiste a été le leader de l'orchestre régional de Gao The Songhaï Stars. Victime d'un producteur véreux au moment de son premier album "Hoga" sa reconnaissance restera nationale jusqu'à "Sahel folk" signé sur le label de Chicago Thrill Jockey.
Sidi Touré, à l'instar d'Ali Farka Touré, est l'ambassadeur de cette culture Sanghaï, cette antique civilisation musulmane qui régnait sur les bords du fleuve Niger.
Accompagné de deux guitares, d'un violon traditionnel, d'une calebasse et de choeurs féminins, le chanteur livre ici un blues malien hypnotique, une ballade langoureuse et entêtante sur la dune rose de Koïma qui domine ce fleuve sacré. - FIP

A lire le générique et l’intitulé de ce nouvel opus de Sidi Touré, on pense de prime abord à un petit big band de cet empire du milieu, entre désert et Afrique Noire. A écouter cette petite dizaine de titres, on découvre une série de duos intimistes entre le guitariste malien et ses amis musiciens et chanteurs (Dourra Cissé, Douma Maïga, Jambala Maïga, Jiba Akolane Touré…). Enregistrées en toute simplicité dans la cour de la maison de sa soeur, ces rencontres sont toutes régies par le même processus créatif : le morceau est choisi autour d’un thé et capté en pas plus de deux prises pour conserver la spontanéité de l’instant. Chargés en émotions, ces blues songhaïs qui semblent naître de la poussière de la cour, s’élèvent haut dans le ciel mandingue. - Mondomix

Figure discrète de la musique malienne, ancien patron des Songhaï Stars de Gao, le chanteur et guitariste Sidi Touré renoue avec un blues authentique et concentré sur l’essentiel dans son album Sahel Folk, conçu dans un esprit de convivialité qui s’entend.

L’aptitude de Sidi Touré à aller vers l’autre et accepter d’ouvrir son univers musical se devine à l’aune de ses récentes collaborations. Le guitariste malien sait séduire par son jeu, sans aucun doute. En 2003, le rappeur suisse Jonas, qui a fait sa connaissance à Bamako, lui propose de prendre part à son album Bagages. Puis c’est un épisode des "concerts à emporter", série réputée sur Internet, qui lui est consacré en 2008 et dans lequel on le voit notamment croiser les cordes de son instrument avec celles d’un violoncelliste, tous deux assis au bord d’un trottoir.

Cette fois, il a fait craquer Covalesky, membre du collectif nantais Molecules5, venu de la planète électro dub. Le Français avait imaginé produire, à l’origine, un album qui soit une évocation sonore de la ville de Gao, d’où vient Sidi Touré, lequel devait simplement contribuer au projet. Tout a basculé quand le musicien quinquagénaire s’est installé avec quelques vieux complices dans la cour de la maison de sa sœur, autour d’une indispensable tasse de thé.

L’enregistrement live, dans la plus grande simplicité, a le goût du vrai. La musique redevient un moment de partage, un moyen d’échanger des émotions. Dans un style acoustique très dépouillé, sur une trame par nature répétitive – à la fois son charme et son handicap –, Sidi Touré et ses cinq invités ont interprété au cours de cette session singulière les neuf chansons réunies sur Sahel Folk.

Si les héritiers d’Ali Farka Touré ne manquent pas au Mali, rares sont ceux qui savent exploiter l’aridité du blues songhaï pour en extraire son essence. Quinze ans après Hoga, sorti sur le marché international mais surtout synonyme d’espoirs déçus et d’injustice, Sidi Touré a entre les mains un album qui pourra peut-être lui donner l’occasion de se produire, enfin et pour la première fois, à l’extérieur de son pays. - RFI

cène Bell, derniers rayons de soleil, blues enivrant. Calebasse, sokou, deux guitares, il n’en faut pas plus pour invoquer aussi bien le rock touareg, que la musique mandingue ou celle du Mississippi. Sidi Touré, l’ex-leader des Shongaï Stars et auteur du récent “Koïma”, imprime à l’ensemble un rythme effréné, clairement irrésistible. Ça et là, dans le public, des spectateurs dansent bras levés, tête en arrière, yeux fermés. À les voir, on se dit qu’une petite transe perso, ça a toujours du bon. - Les Inrockuptibles

Sidi Toure´ Koi¨ma
Koi¨ma est le nom d’une dune qui surplombe le fleuve Niger, dans le nord du Mali. Et c’est aussi le deuxie`me album de Sidi Toure´, sommet de folk roots sahe´lien (option songhai¨) en apesanteur. - Les Inrockuptibles

Say we're old friends. I ask you over for tea and you bring a guitar. It's a sunny morning, so we sip and strum outside, on the fire escape. Now imagine I am a celebrated singer from Mali, with a voice as exacting as a raconteur's. You too are a virtuoso, practiced in both the local Songhaï tradition and American blues. And the city beyond the fire escape? That's a vast field by the Niger River, outside the ancient town of Gao.

This is the backstory to Sidi Touré's new album, "Sahel Folk". The unofficial ambassadorship of Malian music was thrust upon Mr Touré after the death of Ali Farka Touré in 2006 (the two men were not related). But recognition first came to him when, at 25, he won the vocalist's top prize at the 1984 Mali National Biennale, a government-produced cultural fair (now defunct, along with the single-party political system that administered it). Another ten years passed before Mr Touré recorded "Hoga", his first solo album. "Sahel Folk" is the long-awaited follow-up to that debut.

The disc features nine songs with a different collaborator on each track. To heighten the sessions' convivial air, the album's producer, a Frenchman who goes by the mononym "Covalesky", recorded Mr Touré and friends in single takes, outside a family-owned house in Gao. Mr Covalesky intended to make "Sahel Folk" an audio documentary on Malian culture, recording hours of street sounds and interviews. But he scrapped this idea when he started listening to the session tapes. "In the face of such beauty and power delivered so simply by Sidi Touré and his friends, there was nothing to add," Mr Covalesky said last autumn in an interview with National Geographic.

With the help of Chicago label Thrill Jockey Records, Mr Touré's second album bypasses the uncertain channels of West African distribution, which had otherwise slowed the singer's output to a trudge. After 16 years, Mr Touré finally returns to us on "Sahel Folk", his voice an aural wonder that's essential intimacy remains intact. - More Intelligent Life

I have to admit, given the volume of press emails I receive daily, 'delete' is a common function on my Entourage. Yet I do glance each one over for standouts like this. Maybe it's simply because I've always had good luck with the last name Touré that I happily accepted a download. After a few listens of Sahel Folk (Jan 25, Thrill Jockey), however, my affection for Mali grew even more. Sidi Touré is a 51-year-old native of Gao in the northern region of his country, one that has produced some of the most incredible blues musicians on the planet. He's been well known in the Bamako circuit for decades, but pushing out on Thrill Jockey is giving him global recognition. Performing a very loose, refined style called songhaï blues, the repetitious nature of his guitar quickly leaves one entranced; the seven-minute "Bera Nay Wassa" is heartbreaking in approach and ascent. The nearly ten-minute "Taray Kongo" is reminiscent of the minimalist splendor of Corey Harris's Mississippi to Mali. With a surge of African artists making their presence known in modern America, expect Sidi to soon catapult into that list. - Huffington Post

Singer-songwriter Sidi Toure’s smooth, resonant voice and insistent, steady-rolling guitar offer a warm and intimate version of acoustic Malian music. Sahel Folk captures Toure in the Niger River city of Gao, playing and singing in relaxed, elegant colloquy with an ensemble of fellow travelers. Like Malian blues progenitor Ali Farka Toure, Sidi Toure has fashioned a very personal style and expression that gathers elements from life experience and traditional song and story.

On these particular sessions, the voices and stringed instruments -- acoustic guitars; kurbu, kuntigui -- of his friends are at the heart of a graceful and subtly-changing weave and flow, creating a musical experience that moves through satisfyingly variegated terrain.

The clarity and precision of the guitar lines is often breathtaking. It’s Malian string heaven as the string players ebb and flow, entrain, or change mood and tempo on a dime. Ringing, stinging, bent-bluesy, and hard-pulled guitar notes push to the fore at times, as do the rippling, fast-plucked patterns and pulses of the traditional instruments.

The singers cover varied terrain as well, with voices smooth, soaring, rough and hard, passing words and melodies back and forth. What might be most appealing about this clear and intimate recording is the way it captures not only a wide variety of textures, moods and voices, but also the musicians’ comfortable -- and nonetheless passionate -- virtuosity and elegance of expression. - Dusted

For most American listeners, the steaming and billowy sounds of Malian desert blues are most familiar via the work of the Ry Cooder-championed guitarist, the late and magnificent Ali Farka Touré. Sidi Touré (no relation), a fellow countryman from the city of Gao (which can get as hot as 119 degrees Fahrenheit), plays guitar at the crossroads of American blues and Malian folk music, similarly to Ali Farka, but with an entirely different aura, despite the initial similarities. His second LP, Koïma, released via Thrill Jockey, is a brilliant evocation of the sublimated mirage spirits of the West African deserts.

Malian guitar style is immediately recognizable. Characterized by ornate slides and pull-offs, grounded via slightly altered blues scales, the twisting and swirling guitar lines (usually two at a time) shift imperceptibly like desert sands. In the work of both Tourés, the active yet reclined guitar is complemented by the longing drones of a sakou, a traditional Malian violin, and simultaneously sparse and complex clicking percussion. But that’s where the similarities end.

Ali Farka’s image is characterized by a pair of sunglasses, a languid cigarette, a beach chair and an electric guitar left precariously on his knee. His raggedly cool aura is reflected in his music: His singing is gravelly, song-structures repetitive in a stoned sort of way with a bright guitar tone that requires shades for both listening and playing. Sidi, on the other hand, appears on Koïma’s cover in tradtional Malian garb, looking something like an acoustic guitar-wielding shaman.

Koïma is a name for a dune in Mali that is supposed to be the gathering place for grave and potent wizards. It’s a fitting title for the record, whose swirling guitars seem capable of conjuring a mystical force at any moment. While repetition is a theme similarly explored by Sidi and Ali Farka, the former’s songs tend to be a little more elaborate in terms of song structures, with intricate and complex polyrhythms bespeaking occult communication between the minimal instrumentation. Sidi’s bluesy voice owes less to the tobacco-and-scotch fueled growl of Tom Waits and more to the impassioned howls of Delta Blues singers, albeit with the pristine quality of a carefully enunciating priest. He’s paired with a female singer who brings out the high end in the mix with a delightfully childlike and mischievous voice.

The guitar work, while exceptional, does seem to lack the unconscious ecstasy of Ali Farka’s languorous musings, which is surely a great part of the West’s fascination with desert blues. However, the songs’ rhythmic and melodic structures are so focused and varied as to make for an unequivocally excellent record that never bores. If you’ve yet to explore this strangely intoxicating genre of music, I would suggest Sidi Touré’s latest album as a perfect starting point: accessible enough for immediate appreciation, yet complex enough for repeat listens. It’s a spiritual experience, transcendence via heat stroke. - CMJ

Sidi Touré is not a name that naturally comes to mind when people speak of African music. In terms of tradition he is most definitely one of the new kids on the block. Sidi comes from a rich vein of Malian music that has been attracting long overdue attention from the Western world in recent years. He has been compared to the more well-known fellow Malian Ali Farka Touré (no relation) but is very much his own man.

Previously, ‘world music’ as it was termed (as if it were from another planet!) was hard to find, buy, listen to or read about. It was notoriously poorly recorded and, to our western ears getting attuned to ‘cd quality’ for the first time, it could sound naïve and unprofessional. And, strewth! They don’t even sing in English!

Thankfully through early champions (the late Charlie Gillett, Andy Kershaw, Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon and most recently Damon Albarn), advances in technology, and a general interest in new sounds things are changing, which is as it should be. The backing of American indie label Thrill Jockey in 2011 saw Sidi’s previous album Sahel Folk propelled to new audiences to great response.

Koïma is Sidi’s second album and has advanced from the homespun duets of his debut (recorded live as a ‘field recording’ at his sister’s house) to a proper studio album recorded with full band. That’s not to say any of the original charm has gone, nor are there choirs of backing singers, brass sections and timpani drums. This is music of sparse beauty and wonderfully bubbling African rhythms on fantastic instruments (calabash anyone?) that mix traditional Mali music with more familiar Western sounds.

The songs themselves are mainly devotional in nature with mantra like repetitions, contrasting keening female backing set amidst rolling acoustic hills – tracks such as Aiy Faadji (I Am Nostalgic) evoke feelings beyond translation.

Uniting the album is Sidi’s songs, which are tributes to the Songhai folk music tradition, which, depending on the rhythm, are called Takambas, Holleys, Gao-Gaos or Shallos. Koïma also bullds on the intimacy set up by Sahel Folk but widens the arena to a more celebratory outward looking collection that mixes African magic and modern city-dwelling.

Title track Koïma (The Pink Dune Of Koïma) refers to a spiritual dune of Gao that “has its head in the sky and its feet in the waters of the river Niger making it a meeting place for the most powerful wizards of the world. Musically it is a complex animal with male and female vocals circling a guitar figure and percussive rattle. Woy tiladio (Beautiful Woman, Godess of Water) does in its trilling runs have fluidity to it. Tondi Karaa (The White Stone) lope around a bluesy riff the could be delta (American or African) and Sidi’s cries (possibly of White Stone) call to mind nothing less than Sting in The Police mode. A Chacun Sa Chance (To Each His Own Luck) features some violin work that could almost be a hip-hop sample. The sparse Euzo closes the album with some intricate acoustic work recalling Nick Drake or Bert Jansch at their most languid. - OMH Music

On his second American
album the spiritually-minded African guitar maestro brings his Songhaïroots -
and its culture of sharing – to the masses.



BY JENNIFER KELLY



“I always compare music to a married woman,” says
Malian guitarist Sidi Touré. “When she
goes to the town hall she wears a veil, but if she wears twenty veils she’s
going to suffocate. Music has to breathe!”



That’s one way of saying that latest album Koïma is more richly ornamented album
than 2011's Sahel Folk (reviewed here), but
only to a point. Where the U.S. debut was
a series of voice and guitar duets, recorded casually at Touré’s sister’s home,
Koïma brings in calabash, bass,
multiple guitars and a back-up singer.
It’s a denser, more animated realization of Touré’s Songhaïroots, a
culture that he explains is centered around sharing – of food, of joy and, most
of all, of music.



“For example, when we recorded Sahel Folk in my sister’s house, she killed a sheep for us,” he
recalls. “If you visit a Songhaï and he
only has one sheep, no matter how poor he is, he will kill it for you. God will
manage the rest.”



Touré grew up in Gao in northern Mali, a center of the Songhai
culture. Born into a noble family, he
wasn’t supposed to become a musician.
In fact, it was frowned upon. But Touré was undeterred by
family pressure. He and his friends made guitars from wooden writing slates as
small children and took turns playing them.
At the age of 10, he won a real guitar in a contest, although one
without strings or tuning pegs. By the
age of 16, Touré had joined the Songhaï Stars as its youngest musician. He learned traditional songs and playing
styles from Ibrahim HammaDicko, one of the Gao region’s greatest players.



“Even
when I joined the Songhaï Stars, my family’s disapproval didn’t relent,” he
remembers. “The situation only began to
change when we won the Biennales of Bamako in 1984 and 1986. We toured through Mali, Niger,
and Algeria,
and only then did they understand that not everybody can become a doctor,
physicianor driver. That’s what makes the world beautiful.”



Touré became a national figure in Mali, but his first record to be released in the
U.S.
was Sahel Folk. A tour last year brought Touré, as well as
two companions who played traditional instruments (kuntigui, kurbus) to the
States as well. “From Sahel Folk and the US tour, I really came to
understand what it means that music has no color and no frontier,” he
says. “Because with one acoustic guitar
and two traditional instruments, American audiences really enjoyed the shows. They proved that without understanding a word. We can understand people thanks to music.” (Go here to read the BLURT
review of that 2011 tour.)









For Koïma (released, like its predecessor on
Thrill Jockey), Touré gathered a diverse group of Malian talent. Oumar Konate, who plays the guitar, is the
song of a long-time Songhaï Star supervisor and master of ceremonies. Alex Alass Baba, the calabash player, has
played with Baba Salah. Leila Hamidou,
the back-up singer, is an old family friend from northern Mali, whom Touré
reconnected with at a benefit to protest human trafficking. Zoumana Téréta, who plays the violin-like sokou
player, has accompanied Oumou Sangaré.



As
with Sahel Folk, the songs in Koïma draw from Gao tradition, though filtered through Touré’s own
experience and artistic vision. “My basis is the folklore of Gao,” he
explains. “As I like to say, ‘Someone
else’s blanket cannot cover you. Only your own blanket can.’”



Yet
though he takes inspiration from the music that surrounded him in childhood and
which still flourishes in his homeland, Touré reinterprets these traditions
freely. “To compose my own songs, I often
keep the rhythm and change the lyrics or the melody to make it more trenchant. Or I might change the structure of the song.
Sometimes people say that I modernize the Songhaï music, but to me it’s
reinterpretation.”



The
title track, for instance, takes its name from mystical “Koima,” (in Gao, “Koï”
means “go” and “ma” means “hear”), a pink dune where legend says that all of
the wizards in the world would gather. “It
is said that there is something under the dune, but I don’t want to talk about
that. The mystery of Koïma can’t be told. It has to be lived.”



Touré
says he visited Koïma with a friend and went to see its chief. “This chief gave
me his blessing, there is no better gift than a blessing,” says Touré. “That’s
why I decided to name this album Koïma,
as a sign of gratitude.”



The
song “Tondi Karaa,” or “The White Stone,” one of the album’s best, also
has a historical resonance. Touré
explains that the song commemorates a stone brought to Mali from Mecca
by Askia Mohamed. “While he crossed the desert, his camel died. Lost, he prayed
and before the end of the prayer, an elephant appeared and brought him to Gao,”
Touré explains.



Once
brought to Gao, the stone became part of the community’s religious ritual. “It was an important stone,” says Touré. “Beneath
it there was a fine, white sand used during blessings. But the stone
disappeared. A lot of things are said about this, but for me the reason was
because people stopped loving each other, so God was angry. People turned their
backs, so God turned his back.”



Despite
this dire ending, “Tondi Karaa” is one of the album’s most rollicking,
rhythmically propulsive tracks, riding a slant-wise, blues-driving guitar riff
(it sounds like Muddy Waters) that nearly necessitates physical motion. It’s quite a change from Sahel Folk‘s melancholy introspection, but Touré cautions listeners that
this new direction may not be permanent. Album number three, when it comes,
will showcase yet another side of Touré’s Gao-based, spiritually uplifting art.
Touré refuses to get specific but admits, “I can say that the audience will see
another side of my music, as Koïma is
different from Sahel Folk, as the third album will be
different from Koïma. - Blurt

It's become virtually impossible to talk about the music of without referencing the in his home country of Mali. The weight and particulars of Touré's work are rooted and steeped in that region, all of which casts a heavy shadow over his unofficial ambassadorship, but nothing standing could darken the intention or spirit of his music.

"Ni See Ay Ga Done," from this year's Koïma, is warm and connective, transcendent of whatever short fence language could attempt to place around a song. You don't need to understand the words that Touré and his childlike backing singer project in their pensive waves — praising and thanking early supporter Aminata Maïga for her patronage to the Songhaï culture, the — to feel a reverent smile jumping out from every corner.

The traditional, driving takamba rhythm of one-two-three (or one-two-three-four-five) forms the song's spine and the legs, maintaining forward momentum for Touré and his players' melodies as they meander and shimmer across and into each other. The interplay of Touré's guitar and the equal-in-the-mix , a plucked instrument with a similar melancholic timbre to the Chinese huqin — as well as the sokou, a traditional violin as dry-sounding as balsa wood — cohere into a twinkling, masterful lattice. Meanwhile, somewhere, Touré is probably creating. - NPR

It's easy to romanticize the Sahara — a vast expanse of sand organized around the northern reaches of the Niger River. Part of that romance is captured in the music of singer and guitarist Sidi Touré, who composes songs in the folkloric tradition of the Songhaï people.

His new album of desert chamber music, Koïma, harkens back to the glory days of the Songhaï Empire, which ruled much of the region from the city of Gao in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Many of Touré's songs express nostalgia for that bygone era. Today, one might also feel a hankering for the peaceful coexistence that this region's peoples enjoyed until recently. In March, Tuareg rebels swept the city of Gao into a self-proclaimed Tuareg homeland that they are calling Azawad. But the sedentary Songhaï and nomadic Tuareg have lived side by side for centuries, and share much — including, in recent times, a reputation for creating highly distinctive guitar music.

Songhaï music is delicate and rhythmically complex. When Sidi Touré plays and sings on his own, you can feel him channeling ancient folklore through the modern filter of an acoustic guitar. A couple of songs on Koïma make a nod to the blues — an easy leap for this dry, dusty, lonely music.

Maybe the most beautiful thing about Songhaï music is its multilayered rhythms, where slow and fast tempos and even different time signatures coexist in a subtle, shifting flow. That mysterious duality is endlessly fascinating to the ear, and also a fitting metaphor for the current cultural drama unfolding in and around Gao. In music and in life, contradictory truths coexist, and the challenge is to find a balance — as Touré does so beautifully on Koïma. - NPR

Koïma is the second album the Malian folk-blues singer Sidi Touré has released on Thrill Jockey, a Chicago label best known for putting out post-rock bands like Tortoise and the Sea and Cake throughout the 1990s, and more recently for records by Liturgy and Future Islands. Basically, not Malian folk-blues. The label came to Touré through a demo he and his manager sent in because they were fans of Radian, a semi-obscure Viennese Thrill Jockey band that hasn't put out an album since 2009. If you're looking for great little stories to encapsulate the hookups facilitated by the globalization of culture and communication, there you go.

Touré is from Gao, a city on the Niger River near the southern edge of the Saharan desert, which covers a massive portion of northern Mali. As of this writing, Gao is of particular international interest: At the end of March, it was seized from the Malian government by Tuareg rebels and now serves at the capital of Azawad, the Tuareg state that declared independence from Mali in early April. Touré is currently safe in Bamako, the country's capital, about 700 miles southwest of Gao.

None of this may mean anything to you. I convey it only out of reportorial duty and to highlight the strangeness of Touré's context: an artist who broke from his purebred bloodline to pursue guitar, later winning a string of prizes from the Malian government, and even later having his hometown be a focal point of political upheaval that has pushed his country toward serious instability just as he starts to get press and attention from far, far away.

If you've never heard Malian blues before, well, there's nothing to compare it to other than Malian blues. Suffice it to say that the harmonic character of the music-- the "chords"-- will probably sound familiar, but the rhythms and structures won't. Malian blues is typified by lead vocals and melodies that play over rhythmically interwoven lines of guitar with the lilt of a boat rocking on a river. The spacious, heavy quality of American blues is replaced with something more Eastern, a constancy of sound closer to, say, Indian music, and it also makes a lot of use of 6/8 time, which is sort of like a jig or a gallop-- a contrast to the square 4/4 of its American analog.

Touré's last Thrill Jockey album, 2011's Sahel Folk, was recorded in his sister's house in Gao with a string of collaborators. Press holds that he would meet with people, make a pot of tea, decide on a song, chitchat, then break for the afternoon, only to come back the next day and lay it down in a take or two. Koïma, by comparison, is a more structured album, and what it lacks in that illusory spontaneity of the front porch, it makes up for in intensity and focus. Sahel Folk was primarily guitar; Koïma, in contrast, has prominent electric bass, and the scratchy, hypnotic sound of the sokou, a folk violin. It also features vocals by Leïla Ahimidi Gobbi, a woman with a high, squealing voice that cuts through the mix like citrus through fat-- a perfect contrast to Touré's own tenor, which fits the character of the instruments so snugly it sometimes blends into the background. The arrangements are as subtle as they are detailed, and the result is a little like one of those optical illusions where, in what seems like a static image, the eye perceives weird, fluttering movements.

Koïma is a beautiful album, and at times beautiful to the exclusion of anything else. Hearing this music-- which I'm told is classified as traditional-style Songhai folk-- has to be different for me than for the Malian who might've been raised around stuff like it. Context in this case is a little damning: Is what I'm hearing Bill Callahan or is it Mumford and Sons? No idea, but it's certainly being packaged as authentic. In either case, I doubt it matters: As a Western listener, there's always some enlightening novelty in hearing the blues-- especially the blues coming from a place currently as fouled-up as Mali-- recast as something so bright, so unapologetically hopeful.
- Pitchfork