Great music should transport us into another world, and within seconds of pressing play, the new Songhoy Blues album Héritage sweeps the listener straight into the heart of Mali, with a sound deeply rooted in ancient tradition, but vibrantly alive.

In 2012, Garba Touré (guitar), Aliou Touré (vocals), Oumar Touré (bass), and Nathanael Dembélé (drums) were forced to flee their homes in Timbuktu and seek refuge in Bamako after extremist groups in Northern Mali imposed strict Sharia law, banning music. This displacement became the catalyst for a burning need to preserve their heritage through song, and fight against the erasure of Malian music, storytelling, identity, and community. Their debut album, Music in Exile (2015), blended American guitar licks with Malian grooves to create a masterpiece of desert blues, celebrating their roots to create music that carried the weight of tradition while embracing the modern world. Earning comparisons to both Ali Farka Touré and Jimi Hendrix, they quickly gained a reputation for their high energy performances all over the world.

With Héritage, Songhoy Blues move completely away from the rock-band setup of their previous albums to fully embrace the traditional sounds of Mali with a vast collective of local musicians. The album is a deep dive into the rich cultural lineage that they’ve always sought to honour - not an evolution, but a true homecoming.
While past records operated in a tight quartet format - guitar, bass, drums, and vocals - this album expands into a vast, collaborative effort, featuring a huge array of Malian musicians, and drawing deeply from a wellspring of traditional sounds and embracing the acoustic, communal spirit of West African music. The result is a record that feels less like a band performing, and much more like a living, breathing cultural document, filled with voices, rhythms, and melodies passed down through the generations. The music itself is universally inviting, with hypnotic grooves, rich melodies, and instrumentation so immersive that it truly transcends all barriers of geography or genre. There’s an inherent optimism throughout - a quiet yet undeniable joy that never resorts to bombast or excess. It’s celebratory, yet calm; energetic, yet supremely laid back.

As the world becomes increasingly chaotic, Héritage offers a timeless escape, a place untouched by the anxieties of 2025. Rather than feeling in any way modern, it feels like music that has always existed in this part of the world, carried through time by tradition and necessity. The kora, a 21-stringed harp-lute, weaves gracefully throughout. Beneath, the kamalengoni adds a percussive twang, whilst Senufo xylophones ripple with bright, joyous tones. Traditional flutes drift through the mix like passing winds, as the soku, a single-string fiddle, wails like a voice calling out across the desert. Rather than relying on electric guitars and heavy production, Héritage builds its world from the ground up, embracing the sounds that have carried Malian music for generations in a celebration of tradition that feels meticulously crafted, yet effortlessly alive.

Héritage is a celebration of identity and tradition, embracing the weight of history with reverence to explore what it truly means to belong to a land and a culture. With nearly 40 musicians from across Mali’s many tribes, the result is an intricate, layered soundscape where voices, rhythms and melodies entwine like the strands of a great musical tapestry. One of the album’s standout moments is Norou, a breathtaking duet with Rokia Koné that soars with soulful harmonies and an aching sincerity. Close choral harmonies replace electric riffs, and delicate percussion takes the place of pounding drums, creating something both soft and extremely powerful.

This is music that surrounds you with its sun-drenched textures and effortless rhythms. Even for those who have never explored Malian music before, the melodies here are instantly welcoming, carrying a sense of joy and togetherness that transcends language. And though it is steeped in tradition, Héritage is not a relic, but a celebration of history that refuses to be confined to the past. This is not just a career-defining work for the band, but one of the most transportive albums released in a long time. At this early point in the year, when the world feels cold and bleak, bathe in the warmth and light of this early highlight of 2025, one that will surely continue to resonate long beyond the winter months.