Yaala Yaala Records

Awhile ago we lived in rural Mali, the three of us, man, woman, boy. We loved it there. We listened to the music our friends and neighbors out in Bougouni listened to. We never once heard Amadou and Mariam or Salif Keita or Habib Koite or Toumani Diabite and my one query regarding Ali Farka Toure, to a taxi driver, was rebuffed with a scornful, "Only the tubabu listen to him." I began to suspect that much of the music I'd heard back home--Ali Farka, Oumou Sangare, Habib Koite--was almost created exclusively for export. Indeed, much of it was recorded at studios in Paris or Belgium.Instead, our friends listened to bootleg cassettes of shows recorded on battery-powered boomboxes out en brousse or donsongoni music by hunters like Yoro Sidibe or Samou Diakite and recorded at small studios in Bamako or old style griots like Bara Sambarou or Daouda Dembele. You could buy these cassettes for less than a dollar at the kaseti shanties in the Bougouni marche.Like our friends at Sublime Frequencies, we're interested in releasing music from far flung--or not so--corners of the globe. In our case, we're focusing pretty specifically on the West African country of Mali.In April, with our friends at Drag City, we hope to put out three cds: a live concert by Pekos and Yoro Diallo, griot Daouda Dembele's "Ngognekorotonkan" and Bougouni Yaalali, a sound portrait of the music you might hear if wandering down the road in Bougouni or Bamako.