Blog # 46…June 2015
Ah music, that most evocative, soothing and spirited art
form. We’re lucky that we can listen how and when we like, and some of us can
play a bit too. Not so with musicians in
some parts of the world where it’s seen as subversive and politically
dangerous.
At the recent HotDocs festival in Toronto ,
I saw a moving account of some courageous and committed musicians in Mali
(a large landlocked country in the bulge of west Africa) who responded to the
banning of any form of music by going underground.
Since 2001, Mali
had been the site of Festival au Desert, held outside Timbuktu
in the north, attracting world attention. Following the concert in 2012, fundamentalist
jihadists adopted a strict interpretation of Sharia law, burning instruments
and destroying radio stations. Many musicians refused to be silenced and either
disappeared or went into exile, waiting and watching for a chance to re emerge.
The film I saw, They
Will Have To Kill Us First, is a battle cry of defiance. That spirit led Khaira Arby
(The Nightingale of the North) - who’d been biding her time for a couple of
years - to convince her fellow vocalist Disco to risk a small concert in a town
square as a rallying cry to her fellow citizens. As I watched her determined organizing of the
staging for the concert and the eager gathering of the crowd, there was a scary
sense that guys with guns would arrive and it would end in violence. Happily not, the crowd gathered a bit tentatively, soon started smiling and quickly erupted
into dancing and singing along. Khaira speaks of peace and unity with tears in
her eyes…most of the people in audiences on both sides of the screen had them
too. 
Songhoy Blues, a gritty blues band took another route and
went into exile in the south. Equally committed to freedom they continued to
keep the spirit of their music alive, attracting the attention of the African
Express Team who invited them to a recording session when they came to 
Louis Armstrong was also brave in the face of political
pressure. In
February 2015
brought a cease fire in Timbucktu, we’ll hope that it leads to peace and a resumption of Festival au Desert…and as
you enjoy your playlist, give a thought to our brothers and sisters who risk
their lives to keep their music alive. A huge shout out to Satchmo, Khaira and Disco and Songhoy Blues…
