Malian bluesman Samba Touré is a protégé of the legendary Ali Farka Touré. Touring with Farka Touré, Samba was profoundly influenced and began creating his own style of Desert Blues. His latest album “Binga” is out on Glitterbeat Records. DJ SpinCycle sets the dancefloor ablaze.

Samba Touré’s life changed considerably when he met perhaps Mali’s greatest musical luminary: Ali Farka Touré (an artist his mother had also played with). Before then he had been a singer in a multi-ethnic Malian group, whose variety helped bring minorities together. It was towards the end of the 1990s that he was recruited by the master to join his 1997 and 1998 international tours on backing guitar and vocals.

In 2009, Samba Touré’s international reputation shot to new heights as he was given the opportunity to record a tribute to Ali Farka – Songhaï Blues. It is a title that tells us a lot about the artist, about his connection to his cultural Songhai roots, and the blues component that runs through his veins. As evidenced within the first few minutes of this film – where he plucks an electric guitar in melodic unison with Malian vocals – he doesn’t see the two as mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite.

“I’m singing with my guitar,” he says before finishing and exclaiming “that is the blues!” It is a fascinating idea, and one that Samba Touré illustrates by describing the distortion, the blues and the rock techniques that have long been a feature of North Malian village ceremonies, in a landscape completely separate from the Western conceptions of the genre.

DJ SpinCycle
Amarrass Records label co-founder, music producer, recording engineer and radio jockey Ankur Malhotra aka DJ SpinCycle is an avid musicologist who explores, engages, and connects with musical traditions from around the world. Over two decades of crate-digging esoteric sounds on vinyl from around the world, DJ SpinCycle presents recontextualized field recordings, obscure sounds and patterns, reimagined and reinterpreted for the dance floor. Featuring two turntables, a mixer and a crate load of wax, creating layers of dubby, clubby, psychedelic sounds!