The drums are pounding, the guitars are screaming, the bass is pumping, the hands are clapping, but it’s the faces you notice the most – the smiling, grinning, laughing faces of Songhoy Blues on stage at Sidney & Matilda. There can’t be many bands today who radiate joy so clearly and openly as the Malian four piece, who have built up a sizable following in the UK since their debut album ‘Music in Exile’landed in 2015. The album title wasn’t a stylistic choice: it came about after the group were literally forced to flee their home towns during civil war in their home country. And so, with that whistle-stop backstory in tow, the band’s stated aim to spread a message of peace, hope and understanding through music starts to make sense perhaps more than any other band you’ll find performing in Sheffield this year.
If Songhoy Blues’ lyrics are all about peace and understanding, their music has a harder edge that reflects their challenging beginnings. They fuse Western rock with West African desert blues, and in a live setting every song is played 10% harder, 10% louder, and 10% faster. Breakout single ‘Soubour’ is belted out at breakneck speed, and it’s an immediate set highlight. In fact, many of the songs from ‘Music in Exile’ have had a turbocharged refresh here, with Al Hassidi Terei even drawing an unlikely singalong from a Sheffield crowd surprisingly well-versed in the Songhai language of northern Mali. Or maybe they’ve just been listening to Songhoy Blues quite a lot. Either way, it’s testament to the power of music. The very fact that you can have four people performing a set in a language likely no-one else in the room understands (and to a rapturous response) suggests music as good as this can cut down any linguistic or cultural barrier in front of it.
Lyrical comprehensibility aside, the lack of true singalongs is easily made up for by the sheer joy – not just on stage – but all around the packed-out Sidney & Matilda room. Oh, and handclaps. Lots of handclaps: slow ones, quick ones, spaced out ones, frenetic ones… if there is a chance to clap along to one of these songs, frontman Aliou Touré will take it with both hands… and probably clap some more. It’s a more-than-fitting substitute for the language barrier, and what’s more, you can tell he would probably do this in Bamako as much as in Sheffield. Joy.
Still, don’t be fooled by the claps and grins and smiles on stage. Songhoy Blues came from tough beginnings, hounded out of their hometown because religious fanatics deemed music a sin. They started with ‘Music in Exile’, and their three albums since then have continued to defy those who told them they couldn’t make music: ‘Résistance’, ‘Optimisme’, ‘Héritage’. It’s a neat summation of Songhoy Blues, where there’s steel behind the smiles and guts behind the grins. As long as they’re around, the drums will continue to pound and the guitars will continue to scream – exile or no exile.
