Maison Des Jeunes: A Cross-World Collaboration Done Right

Above is our premiere of the video for Yacouba Sissoko Band's "Chanson Denko Tapestry," produced by none other than Brian Eno. Read frequent Noisey contributor Zachary Lipez's piece on Maison Des Jeunes, the compilation the track appears on, below.

In 2012, a combination of a coup in the south of Mali and an uprising (first by the Taureg independence movement but quickly taken over by extremist Islamist groups) in the north threw the country into chaos. People fled their homes in the thousands, many were killed, and the country’s future as a constitutional democracy was put into doubt. A combination of a revitalized Malian army and French intervention, earlier this year, stemmed the majority of the carnage and wholesale cultural destruction.

Art is arguably not as important as politics and the life and death choices that go with it, but the conflict in the north is the inevitable backstory of the making of Maison Des Jeunes. The record would have, no doubt, been made either way; the music of Mali is beloved worldwide and for good reason, but, as always, with any record, one can never, as much as one would like to, just talk about the music. People make the music and people live in the world.

Photos by Nick Zinner

Maison Des Jeunes, made over the course of seven days in Bamako and named after the youth hostel/center where it was recorded was put together by Africa Express, a musical collaboration organized by Daman Albarn, between musicians from the UK (and to a lesser extent the US) and their counterparts in various nations in Africa. Albarn started it in 2006 (though his connection and love of Malian music started far earlier- his Mali Music album is extremely great). Depending on the situation of the country they’re joining with, Africa Express makes a recording, puts on a show, or just has extended jam sessions with the musicians from all involved countries. With Maison Des Jeunes, the decision was to make a cohesive album. The result is as thrilling a collection of songs as you’re going to find in 2013. Each song is collusion between a Malian musician (mostly unknown in the west—with this effort the organizers in Africa Express chose to boost lesser-known musicians than earlier efforts, as presumably the conflict in the North heightened the need to spread the wealth a bit…) and their western counterpart. After a brief period of socializing, the artists would pair off as they saw best and just start making whatever music the spirit encouraged; sometimes working with already-written material and more often than not starting entirely from scratch.

Nick Zinner says of his involvement in the project, “To go from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs where we labor in a room for days for a song and I have twenty pedals to no pedals and ‘Just go!’ Well, there are few better ways to learn about things than to just do them.” Nick, guitarist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Head Wound City (full disclosure: We’ve been pals since 1997. I’ve been riding his coattails since roughly 2000), met with desert blues band, Songhoy Blues (whose back story of forming in the refugee camps and having both Songhoy and Tuareg members, is considerably better than how band met cute at Brown) for the first time in October and performed the song they wrote together, a roiling Safe As Milk-era barnburner, at the Maison Des Jeunes album release party, this week in London.

He continues, “It was a culture shock, totally, and I’m not a singer/songwriter so it was terrifying but you go into it with uncertainty and end up getting an education culturally, politically, and personally. The only problem was being a vegetarian. I ate a lot of protein bars and rice. I think the main point of the project—and why it works—is because above all it promotes and is about new collaborations, whether it's in a performance, in their four-hour shows, or in this Mali record, with the emphasis being on the African artists; it’s at least setting up a context where that (the creative collaboration) can happen.”

Ghostpoet, the Mercury Prize nominated UK electronics artist, echoed this sentiment, while both musicians took pains to make clear that the personal growth was just an added bonus to the creative experience itself, the educational, joy in spontaneous collaboration, and overcoming of fear aspect of the project. “A laptop, synths, whatever was small enough to fit in a suitcase. With that, we’d go from room to room and work. There is no perfect time for creativity….the space is in your head.” Ghostpoet went on to say that he wrote his parts on the bus the second-to-last morning before they left to return to England and recorded with the Malian talking drum ensemble, Doucoura, that evening.

This catch-as-catch-can attitude of inventiveness under the pressures of both time and limited resources serves the album well. Though nothing seems half-baked, because of the high level of skill of the musicians involved, there’s a loose and festive feel to the record, even in it’s most melancholy passages such as the Albarn produced ‘Dougoudé Sarrafo’ by Bijou (of the Bamako band, Groupe Tchoundé Blu)

It would be far too easy to imagine an air of doom to suffuse the entire project. While the AQIM, MUJAO, Ansar ud-Dine takeover of Northern Mali has been fought back, the refugees number in the thousands and foreign intervention coupled with the inevitable reprisals of war have created scars that will take ages to heal. Not even to get into the initial societal problems (Touareg independence issues specific to Northern Mali and the general cronyism/corruption issues that are endemic worldwide but had been especially detrimental in Mali in recent years) that made a hardline Islamist takeover so easy, that are still unaddressed. So one could reasonably expect Maison Des Jeunes to A. Not happen at all, or B. Be a miserable or schmaltz filled affair. But, through the indefatigable nature of both the organizers and the local musicians, it has happened and it’s completely shockingly marvelous.

The history of Western pop music’s intersection with Africa is not an especially proud one. I’m not going name names and shame perfectly well-intentioned idiots here; you probably have your own least favorite “White man goes to Africa-gets saved/does some saving” album. Suffice to say that there’s usually a messianic…tinge is probably too mild a word, to the whole affair. So when a Western artist, or artists, gets it right (or, given that the world is complicated and a colonial history looms over almost everything, as well as can reasonably be expected); it’s something to celebrate.

When I questioned Yacouba Sissoko (through email and then a translator working with a bad phone line to Mali), his answer about Western intermingling was both pragmatic and matter of fact. “It's a good thing to collaborate with Western people, especially if that helps to promote our music.”

Ghostpoet and Nick Zinner, also, are both well aware of the trope of finding oneself in Africa. “I’m not going to take part in something that comes across as westerners trying to save these ‘people.’ That wasn’t a concern because it didn’t come across that way in the first place,” says Ghostpoet. Zinner says roughly the same thing; “We were very aware of the very, very, VERY last thing we wanted to be was musical colonialists, out of respect for the musicians, and, frankly, out of respect for Damon too. Also, it’s not like there was anything that we could dream of making ‘better.’ We just wanted to make something new.”

Whether Maison Des Jeunes is, as Zinner was going for, entirely new is perhaps arguable and certainly pretty irrelevant; it’s a thrilling listen that succeeds on any critical terms. From the Brian Eno-produced Yacouba Sissoko track (“I didn't know him before, and it was interesting to work with him. He is really cool and that was really pleasant.”) to the utterly hypnotic Lobi Traoré Band (produced by Django Django’s David Maclean) to the Malian hip-hop—complete with repeating kora sample—of Talbi’s ‘Rapou Kanou’ (produced by UK producer, Two Inch Punch), the musicians make songs so goddamned rad that it’s almost impossible to believe that they were composed and recorded in a seven-day period on the second and third floor of a reconfigured youth center.

The reader will have to forgive the breathless nature of some of my descriptions, but it’s very hard to exaggerate the hardships that so many of the musicians involved have had to overcome in the last couple years, and that in turn can’t help but frame one’s perceptions. As Andy Morgan describes in his highly recommended (if I could quote all 200 pages here, I would) book, “Music Culture & Conflict in Mali, ”What’s been happening in Mali isn’t a war on terror, it’s a war on culture.” Music is an essential part of the identity of Mali. The musicians there aren’t overly romantic and they don’t put a higher premium on art than human life, but, as the various musicians quoted in Morgan’s book point out, they understand what has been foisted upon them by uncontrollable situations; the role as ambassadors to the rest of the world. They have the gift and burden to provide a face and sound to the statistics of war and cultural suppression. While hardly fair, it can’t be denied that music that is made by the Malians on Maison Des Jeunes, or done sole by Rokia Traore or Ben Zabo or Amadou & Miriam or Fatoumata Diawara or Tamikrest provide both essential spotlight to the nation, while at the same time making some the best music of the 21st century so far, hyperbole be damned; I stand by that.

I asked Yacouba Sissoko if there was something that he was hoping the album would accomplish or if the artistic statement was enough and again his answer was again entirely matter of fact: “That (the situation in the North) was very bad for musicians, we could not play because of the state of emergency; Malians are Muslim, but not fanatic. Thank God it is finished. I hope that (Maison Des Jeunes) will help us to become more well-known, and that it will help us to show the world what we are able to do.”

Sitting in the comfort of my apartment in NYC, I’m indebted to those who were in Mali and wrote about it. Peter Tinti, Ian Birrell, and of course, Andy Morgan. For laymen like me, you really can’t go wrong with both Africa is a Countryand Bridges to Bamako for news from and about Mali, both politically and culturally. As always, wish I could recommend more actual Malian writers but I don’t speak French, so my ignorance limits that. Maison Des Jeunes is out now on Transgressive Records. As always…BUY THE ALBUM WITH MONEY.

Zachary Lipez lives in Brooklyn, but don't hold that against him. He's on Twitter - @ZacharyLipez