Live

A veteran of Mali’s oldest dance orchestra Super Biton de Ségou, Mama Sissoko became the band’s guitarist in 1972. When Super Biton broke up in the late 1980s, he forged a solo career before reforming the group in 2001 and taking over as band leader from Amadou Ba. This album was recorded at a 1998 concert in Paris, three years before the reformation, with a backing band featuring veteran Super Biton alumnus Toussaint Sainé as a guest vocalist. The ten live tracks here include songs that would soon appear on Sissoko’s second album, Soleil de Minuit (1999) plus a nod to his famous history with ‘Iri’, a Super Biton classic to which his iridescent electric guitar playing lends a deliciously psychedelic twist. There’s some wonderful Cuban-influenced African salsa on ‘Soleil de Minuit’, so good that it’s then reprised as the encore to the set. Best of all, though, is ‘Boma Ma’, a traditional Malian hunter’s song turned into a cathedral-sized raise-the-rafters epic with multiple guitars spiralling everywhere, energetically clattering percussion and a soulful, vaulting vocal duet between Sainé and Sissoko.