Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.For his last few albums Samba Touré has examined the state of Mali in the wake of the political crisis of the early 2010s and found it wanting. “Liars, thieves”, he commanded, “get off our road.” His new album Baarakelaw homes in on the informal workers of Bamako and paints a more specific social-realist portrait; a griot hymning the praises of the low-income members of society rather than the privileged. Fittingly, it was recorded in humble circumstances. Working under the capital’s ongoing electricity shortages, the musicians dashed across town to the house of Touré’s manager whenever there was a gap in the blackouts and laid down tracks quickly and roughly. This spontaneity shines through, and although producer Mark Mulholland later added unnecessary banjo, organ and drums when he mixed the tapes in France, the album has the immediacy of a street recording.Touré was a protégé and bandmate of the desert blues maestro Ali Farka Touré, although his songs are decidedly acoustic in tone and his singing sweeter. But he has the same love of a repeated riff: “Paasekaw”, a tribute in Songhoy to the blanchisseurs who iron clothes on an industrial scale, mimics their actions with a guitar pattern sweeping back and forth. Similarly, the syncopated percussion and guitar ostinatos on the Bambara-language “Fini Gochila” echo the movements of the bazin-tappers, who create shiny fabrics by repeatedly hitting starched cloth.Elsewhere songs pay homage to street water-sellers (“Aminako”, where call-and-response verses resemble sales cries), to shea butter co-operatives (“Boulanga”, with Touré singing at the bottom of his range to harmonica from Matt de Harp) and the pousse-pousseurs who keep Bamako’s logistics running on handcarts (the measured tread of “Wotoro Pousselaw”).The closing “Yerkomahine” is a sad, grateful song to Touré’s late wife, thanking her for a lifetime of work and love.★★★★☆‘Baarakelaw’ is released by Glitterbeat
