Once again my favourite Benn loxo listener, sufi, has come through with a great album: Super Biton de Segou’s Afro Jazz du Mali.

I had heard of the Orchestre Régional de Segou before, but I had no idea that they morphed into Super Biton during the 80s. They have a serious Bambara sound and include several musicians who went on to solo fame like Mama Sissoko and Mamadou Doumbia. As far as I can tell they released four albums between some time in the late 1970s and 1986. Afro jazz du Mali was their last full-length as a group.

Segou, by the way, is Mali’s second largest city. It sits on the Niger river an hour or two north-east of the capital, Bamako. It used to be an important administrative centre for the French colonials. More interesting is Ségoukoro, a small town just outside of Ségou. It used to be the capital for the Bambara Malian empire that ruled most of West Africa – thousands of kilometres in either direction – during the 18th century. You can find some really cool Bamana/Sudanese architecture around these spots.

Super Biton de Segou – An’Niya