MANU CHAO recounts first meeting SMOD On Amadou & Mariam’s Terrace

-Back In 2005, Manu Chao Was In Mali Producing What Would Become Amadou & Mariam’s Breakthrough Album ‘Dimanche A Bamako’

Sam And His Group SMOD Would Spend Late Nights Perched On His Parents’ Terrace, Improvising And Creating New Songs

“In Mali, people tend to go to sleep early. But every night, Sam and the band would be up on the roof of the family house playing. As I’m

a bit of a sleepwalker, I’d go up there with them and record them for fun.

We soon realized an album was emerging. It was the start of a new adventure.”

– MANU CHAO

SMOD’s U.S. Debut Album (Out 5/24) Was Produced By Manu Chao;

It Fuses Hip Hop, Folk And Blues Music With Traditional Malian Styles

Stream SMOD’s Full Album (Private Media Link);

Listen To A Profile About The Group On PRI’s “The World”

“This young group’s self-titled debut combines clever and hard-hitting

political rap with appealing African guitar lines. The result is an

engaging new sound of Mali, with a strong dose of Manu Chao in the mix.”

– NPR “FIVE AFRICAN ARTISTS TO WATCH”

“SMOD has one of the most intriguing sounds I’ve heard in a long time.“

– MTV IGGY

Nacional Records is proud to announce the May 24th release of the U.S. debut album from Malian trio SMOD. It is a groundbreaking album produced by superstar Manu Chao. SMOD originally connected with Manu Chao through their frontman Sam, who is the son of world music stars Amadou & Mariam. Manu Chao had produced Amadou & Mariam’s breakthrough album, ‘Dimanche a Bamako,’ catapulting them into international icons.

SMOD’s album fuses hip hop, folk and blues music with traditional Malian styles. It is a politically-conscious album that addresses inequalities across African history via impassioned French lyrics. French rap sensation Keny Arkana is featured on the track, “J’ai Pas Peur Du Micro.” SMOD embodies the emergence of a new scene in Africa, the embracing of new urban sounds while incorporating the importance of heritage.

“Hip-hop is rebel music,” group member Ousco affirms. “It came along because things weren’t working right. Back in the day, the griot sang the praises of the King, except that the king wasn’t thinking of his people any more. Many people were marginalized and rejected and it was those people who became rappers. They said to the king, ‘Your power may be fine and all that, but there are people dying of hunger. And we who are from the ghetto, we want something better.’”

Sam, Mouzy and Ousco met and started to hone their skills in the streets of Bamako in 2000. Between them, their lust for different types of music – including rap and traditional Malian music, and their desire to give their perspective on the state of affairs and history of the African continent, SMOD was born. The friends were fans of hip-hop but that was quite common for the youth in Bamako. Teens were falling in love with hip-hop in the late 1990s, along with the rest of Mali, and Africa. “Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, Notorious B.I.G, The Roots…they were our idols,” Ousco recalls.

The group hung out in Faladié, one of Bamako’s most happening neighborhoods, with its immense market and inexhaustible street-level energy. “We used to organize these little freestyle jousts between the rappers,” Ousco explains. “There was always a rap showdown or a dance showdown happening somewhere, and we took part.”

Mali’s homegrown rap scene was young but spurting. Hip hop was still an illicit adventure for most kids, the kind of thing they wouldn’t dream bringing back home to meet the folks. “We were like clandestinos,” Ousco says. “My parents didn’t know anything about my rapping, right up until the time when our songs started to be played on the radio and our videos appeared on TV. Rappers were considered delinquents at that time.”

The group found a space to breathe and rehearse in the house of Sam’s parents, who happened to be the imminently world famous blind Malian couple Amadou & Mariam. “We got together there every evening, in ‘seventh heaven’, on my parents’ roof,” Sam recounts. “That terrace has always been our place of creation, of inspiration.” The trio were grafters right from the start. Sam says that hard work was the most important lesson his parents ever taught him. “Music is a tough career. Nothing is ever preordained and you have to persevere.”

“We couldn’t beat the Americans at their own game,” says Ousco. “We had to try and come from our own culture. So Sam took up the guitar and we tried to mix African singing into the rap.” SMOD developed their own hybrid, which they call ‘Afro-Rap’, with rich tactile instrumentation and bubbling afro-centric rhythms providing a warm bed for their lyrical flow. It’s not American, or French, or even recognizably Malian. But it’s fresh and African. “In some ways I think we opened a breach,” Sam says.

SMOD got to know Manu Chao up on the roof, in the balmy air of the African night, above the raucous hubbub of the streets. He was in Bamako in 2005 to record the hit album ‘Dimanche à Bamako’ with Sam’s famous parents. One evening, when most of the household were already in bed, Sam found Manu strumming his guitar down in the house, so he invited him up. Manu was charmed by these three hard-working dreamers, with their radical lyrics that reminded him so much of his own.

Being a night owl, Chao spent most of the following evenings up top, chatting and jamming. “Whenever he come up to the roof to take some air, he would see us there rehearsing,” remembers Ousco. One of SMOD’s songs, ‘Politic Amagni’ (‘Politics Are No Good’), ended up finding its way onto ‘Dimanche A Bamako.’

Manu Chao came back six months later and recorded SMOD with his little portable studio, up on their roof, or down in the house. His credo was, “You don’t mess with what happens on the terrace.” In other words, keep it simple, natural, rooted. Then Manu took the tapes home with him to mix.

One guitar and 3 voices, this is the basic recipe. A good sense of melody and lyricism, a story full of emotion – this is the power behind SMOD, a universe in which Manu’s discrete touch adds subtle color to the trio’s talents. “It sings” – to paraphrase one of their compositions, and it also raps – a testament to the many levels of one single reality: Bamako, the capital where tar is scarce, where urbanity presses its allure, where the youth vibe to the sounds of the kora and the n’goni, as well as the rhythms of sounds worldwide. -Back In 2005, Manu Chao Was In Mali Producing What Would Become Amadou & Mariam’s Breakthrough Album ‘Dimanche A Bamako’