SOBA

Formed by singer-guitarist Moussa Koita, harmonica player Vincent Bucher and drummer Émile Biayenda, SOBA revives the links between Mandingo song and Mississippi blues. The trio’s Afro-blues is as rustic as it is luminous, exploring the recesses of the human soul.

To go back to the roots of the blues, you have to join the Mississippi from Chicago, sail south to New Orleans via Memphis, then embark for the Caribbean and finally cross the Atlantic to the shores of West Africa. You can watch Martin Scorsese’s From Mali to the Mississippi: Feel Like Going Home or delve into the historic recordings, from American pioneer W. C. Handy to Malian master Ali Farka Touré. If you want to understand all about the journeys that make up the eternal youth of the blues, you can finally listen to a luminous album that sheds light on everything: Fiman, by the Franco-African trio SOBA.

‘Soba’ means ‘big house’ in Dioula, the Mandinka language spoken mainly in Burkina Faso. Home to friends and musical accomplices, Soba is the roof under which Moussa Koita, Vincent Bucher and Émile Biayenda meet. The group has been building up over the last six years, since its members first got to know each other through various projects of other artists, to the point where they now want to build their band on the foundations of the blues they have in common.

To create the album Fiman, Moussa Koita came up with the lyrics and melodies. Vincent Bucher has adapted his smooth, and sometimes saturated harmonica, inherited from Sonny Boy Williamson and James Cotton, to the specificities of Mandingo music. And Emile Biayenda, brings the freedom of jazz and his traditional Congolese percussion heritage to the mix. The songs, which are generally tried and tested on stage, were recorded in the studio under live conditions. They are as fresh as they are raw. The songs deal with themes such as inequality, corruption, the nostalgia of exiles or the challenges of mixed couples, but with simple, straightforward orchestrations. In this magnificent way, SOBA follows in the footsteps of the African troubadours and Mississippi bluesmen who, with their rudimentary means but transcendent interpretations, explored every corner of human nature.