Songhoy Blues (ML) + Ba Balance (DK/GM)

With dusty desert blues scales, sparkling guitar playing and irrepressible solidarity, Songhoy Blues insists on conveying the endangered musical legacy of regime-controlled, northern Mali. Formerly part of Damon Albarn's Africa Express and with concerts at Roskilde and Glastonbury, the world has been eagerly awaiting the quartet's fourth album, “Héritage” (2025) — an excellent performance that they will bring with them when they visit ALICE in October. Danish-Gambian Ba Balance opens the evening.

The Songhoy people live along the Niger River arc in northern Mali, and songhoy music forms one of the mainstays of the sound one associates with “desert blues”. With a heartfelt love for and tribute to this musical heritage, the quartet Songhoy Blues broke through in 2013 with a raw and energetic style that has since been described as “Timbuktu Punk”. Taking their cue from life and love in Mali, the band's songs combine dusty blues scales, propulsive rock rhythms, call-and-response vocals and sparkling guitar playing. But the music is also deeply rooted in the story of a life in exile. For more than a decade, the band has been based in Bamako because musicians in their home region of northern Mali risk their lives as a result of religious fanaticism that considers music to be haram — sin.

Early in Songhoy Blues' career, they became part of Damon Albarn's Africa Express project, where Albarn, along with other Western musicians, traveled to Mali to record with local bands. Songhoy Blues teamed up with Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner, and the collaboration was so fruitful that Zinner also ended up producing their debut album “Music in Exile” (2015). Since then, it has turned into countless concerts worldwide and a total of four studio albums. The latest and long-awaited Héritage (2025) opens up a new chapter. The album draws on the immense musical richness of Bamako, blending the band's distinctive rocked expression with African instruments such as kora, soku, kamalengoni, flute, Senufo xylophone and kalabaspercussion. On “Héritage,” Songhoy Blues examines what tradition really means when cultures come together and people are forced into flight. Migration and displacement have provided new perspectives on their musical heritage, while all the songs continue to contain an element of social criticism. Nevertheless, Songhoy Blues knows if anyone knows how to play up to party -- and you can experience it for yourself when they give a concert at ALICE this October.

Ba Balance

Let yourself sink into a world of electric desert guitar, catchy riffs and groovy African percussion as the duo Ba Balance with Danish guitarist Preben Carlsen and Gambian percussionist Sal Dibba take on ALICE. With unstoppable curiosity, the duo experiment with countless African expressions, acid rock, jazz and blues, bringing a sparkling musicality and a rare interplay to the stage this evening.