Director Johanna Schwartz’s documentary, clearly made with devotion over several years, unpacks how several different Malian musicians struggle to survive the privations and strains of civil war, and especially their grief and horror over the way jihadist rebels banned all music-making the north of the country.
For Malians particularly, such a ban is as monstrous, absurd and cruel as, say, forbidding a whole nation to stop breathing or, to be a little less hyperbolic, stopping Americans from watching television or Brits from complaining in queues.
Abderrahmane Sissako’s recent feature Timbuktu covered similar territory via fiction, but this goes into more journalistic detail about the different political and cultural factions, the recent elections, and life in exile for artists such as singers Khaira Arby, Disco and Songhoy Blues, the last band comprising musicians from all over Mali who put cultural and tribal differences aside to make cracking music and find acclaim on the festival circuit in the UK.
Although many of the stories told here are deeply harrowing and the film sometimes seems to be trying to bite off too much, at least there’s a happy ending of sorts.
