An evening with the incredible Khaira Arby from Mali supported by Animal Collective proteges Prince Rama.

KHAIRA ARBY

Khaïra Arby (pronounced: Hī-ra Arbē), the Nightingale of the North, was born in the village of Abaradjou in the Sahara Desert north of Timbuktu. A Malian favourite, she earnt her stripes beside such Malian stars as her cousin, Ali Farka Touré and the widely influential Fissa Maïga.

She mixes up her Songhai and Berber roots in a music that draws on a sweet mixture of desert blues and western instrumentation, blending ripping electric guitar with the forefather of the banjo and funky drum breaks with the traditional percussion of the scraper and the calabash while her lyrics call out for change and justice - especially for women. Like Miriam Makeba and other African divas before her, Arby embraces her power through words.

“I want to teach the daughters of the world, teach them to think, to value themselves, to sing,"

"[Arby's] powerful voice tore through the audience, and her Malian band played in a style that’s somehow both hypnotic and aggressive, especially when guitarist Dramane Traore took command with his Jimi Hendrix meets Ali Farka Toure solos. She was absolutely spellbinding." Michael May, Texas Observer

"Her 2010 album, "Timbuktu Tarab" (Clermont Music), was one of the decade's best African albums, and onstage her music was even more electrifying... Onstage many of the songs emerged from a slow, improvisatory introduction, a tangle of guitars that would soon snap into a pattern with a hopping, stuttering, trilling guitar line moving crosswise against a brisk rhythm tapped on hi-hat cymbals. Against the rest of the band's pointillistic precision the lead guitarist wrapped his lines in reverb, slyly ambling behind the beat before spiraling rapidly through it, turning its complexities inside out again and again." John Pareles, New York Times

Khaira Arby Group photo by Wakane.




PRINCE RAMA

Prince Rama (aka Prince Rama of Ayodhya) is a three-piece psychedelic rock band based in Brooklyn, NY - swirling synths, pulsing guitars and thunder drums combine with an ethereal chorus of voices and anthemic melodies to create a reverb-washed mine of sonic artifacts drawing from southeast Asian rituals, krautrock legacies, chopped and screwed homages, hallucinatory operas, and dance hall psychedelia.

Originally raised on a Hare Krishna commune in Florida, and educated at an art school in Boston, Sisters Taraka & Nimai Larson and friend Michael Collins have released 4 albums since 2007. Their latest 'Shadow Temple' was released on Animal Collective's Paw Tracks label.