Songhoy Blues ft. Iggy Pop – Sahara
2017 · Directed by Alden Volney
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Best comments
1.“I love the sound of the guitars! I'm in France – you make so much noise we hear you from here ;)”
More comments
- 2.“Wow, did not expect to hear Iggy Pop here.”
The story
Songhoy Blues exist because somebody tried to ban music. When the jihadist group Ansar Dine took over northern Mali and outlawed it, guitarist Garba Touré left the north. In Bamako he teamed up with Aliou and Oumar Touré to play the northern desert sound for refugees like themselves. Damon Albarn's Africa Express found them in 2013, they cut their first single with Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner, and they ended up as one of the subjects of the documentary They Will Have to Kill Us First.
Sahara comes off their second album, Résistance, and it brings in Iggy Pop, who rumbles through his part and gets a laugh griping that the desert has no pizza. Director and animator Alden Volney built the video from animated loops and said flat out he didn't want anything remotely narrative. He went for relentless and strange, a fever dream of African landscapes and wildlife crashing into Western consumer imagery, guitar playing and Iggy's body moves. Volney said the idea was resistance against cultural imperialism, drawn from the album's artwork.
A punk godfather and a desert blues band, poking at the West's shopping cart. Right on brand for a record called Résistance.
