JeConte & the Mali All Stars

JeConte & The Mali Allstars - Mali Blues Vol I & II captured in Bamako, Mali at Yeelen Studios during the 2012 coup d'etat. The sessions feature West African heavyweights Khaira Arby, Adama Drame, Bassekou Kouyate, Boubacar Sidibe, & Vieux Farka Toure, collaborating with Northern California/New Orleans livewire JeConte in an exciting border crossing musical exploration. The album delivers hypnotically soulful tunes that merge West African rhythms, reggae strains and Afropop grooves with seductive New Orleans blues and earthy California rock music.

The featured track 'Le Monde pour la Paix' has Vieux Farka Toure reaching deep, pleading to his ancestry to bring the people of Mali together, for the future of Mali and her children. It also features n'goni master Bassekou Kouyate creating amazing, hypnotic rhythms and the great Khaira Arby, the Tuareg Chantress of Timbuktu, calling for peace and unity for all the tribes of Mali, that they come together for the good of all, for the future of her beloved Mali.

The nucleus of Mali Blues is blues-rock singer-harmonica player JeConte, singer-songwriter-harmonica player Boubacar Sidibe and singer-songwriter-electric guitar virtuoso Adama Drame. The three met in Timbuktu, Mali at the renowned Festival in the Desert in 2010, and soon the trio began to create an original style of blues that strikes to the heart of foundational, soulful blues, a sound redolent of the genre's Motherland origins, as well as the fragrant American evolution.