Future Roots - Mangala (2026)

A Melbourne-based musician and producer, long immersed in West African polyrhythms and a collector of old Malian records, travelled to Mali for the first time in 2024 at the invitation of guitarist Moussa Diakité. Diakité divides his time between Mali and Australia and is part of the African-Australian music scene; he came to Australia in the 1980s as the touring guitarist of Salif Keita and met his future wife there.

The producer had long been drawn to Mali’s 1970s African jazz, with its mystical, spiritual presence that joins ancient roots with contemporary jazz and blues aesthetics, and to the high professionalism of its musicians, which he had previously encountered only in Cuba (in the 1960s and 70s the two countries shared cultural exchange rooted in common socialist ideas). The blues tradition made famous by Ali Farka Touré was another strong draw. With civil unrest and extremist incursions in northern Mali, he first had to go to Morocco and persuade the Malian ambassador to issue a visa, which the ambassador did reluctantly.

In Bamako he met Dramane Fall of Stern Records. Starting out in a London record shop, Fall built a cross-continental African music network (from recording to retail, linking Mali, Senegal, other West African countries and the UK), helped break Salif Keita, Youssou N’Dour and Orchestre Baobab, and still holds a vault of historically significant master tapes. They became close friends, and Fall invited him to the Ségou festival on the River Niger, where the cultures of the Tuareg, Dogon, Bambara, Songhai and others intersect, forming part of Mali’s musical heritage. Hawa Maiga’s performance stood out, and Fall immediately arranged a recording with her backstage.

Back in Bamako, the producer visited djembe master Bassidi Koné for percussion lessons but became absorbed in the balafon playing of Koné’s cousin, Kalifa Koné. He spent two weeks learning and recording with Kalifa, joined by ngoni player Zoumana Diawara. By night he made Mandinka- and Bambara-inspired beats on his MPC; by day he recorded the traditional musicians. The material fell together naturally, and most of it was recorded in about a week. At Bat Cave Studios in Melbourne he added analogue synthesisers, electric piano and jazzy flutes. That is how the Mangala project came to be.

Tracklist:
01-01 Future Roots, Hawa Maïga - Labincasi [4:48]
01-02 Future Roots, Hawa Maïga - Yiriba [5:58]
01-03 Future Roots, Hawa Maïga - Wasulo [6:00]
01-04 Future Roots - Jamadonfini [7:05]
01-05 Future Roots - Adaboura [6:03]