Markus James has been traveling and recording in Mali, West Africa since 1994, when he first made his way to the village of Niafounke to meet the legendary West African Bluesman and Grammy-winning recording artist, Ali Farka Toure. Since then Markus has developed ongoing collaborations with several masters of traditional Malian Music, living together in an adobe-walled house while composing, recording and performing together in the desert region of Timbuktu - the near-mythological crossroads at the southern edge of the Sahara. Markus' albums Nightbird and Timbuktoubab have received excellent critical acclaim, as have his performances in the US with Malian artists based here. CALABASH BLUES features 7 new songs alongside selections from the Nightbird and Timbuktoubab albums, each of which is deeply rooted in Blues, and driven by the calabash, the traditional gourd percussion instrument, which is at the heart of the sound of Ali Farka Toure and of several of the musical traditions which represent the ancient roots of Blues music. A great example of this is "Wakin' Up At Midnight", which begins with the rhythmic sound of two women pounding millet - an everyday sound of village life; the calabash then kicks in with a traditional Songhai spirit rhythm and the guitar translates this into the shuffle feel that is at the core of so much Blues music. The musical arrangements vary from starkly minimal - guitar, calabash, and vocal, ("One Drop", "Dream After Dream") to straight-ahead Roots Rock ("Way To Go"), touching on what could be described as a dreamlike, roots/hip-hop atmosphere on "Need A Believer".
Markus pays tribute to two of his Blues heroes - to Howlin' Wolf on "Come Around", which is based on Wolf's "Smokestack Lightnin'" (and also on "Diraw", traditional Songhai song of exile), and to Skip James "Dream After Dream (For Skip James)", with its falsetto vocal and minor-Blues turnaround.
The primary calabash player on CALABASH BLUES is Hamma Sankare, who played on Ali Farka Toure's albums and tours, and is widely regarded to be the greatest living Songhai calabash player in Mali. Hamma and Markus have been composing, recording and performing together in Timbuktu for years, and Hamma appears in the documentary film Timbuktoubab, seen on many PBS stations (and available now on DVD), in which he talks about the traditional role of the calabash in the musical and cultural life of the Songhai people.
