Surbajo

The Nigerian trio Les Filles de Illighadad comes from a remote village in Africa and now tours the world sharing their pastoral sound, choral chants, and hypnotic guitar.

It’s not such a crazy story: music travels well, along with guns, drugs, and germs. But to find themselves playing a show at Pioneer Works, a community center in Red Hook, has to be something of a culture shock.

Our highlighted track “Surbajo” opens up the live album with the band’s distinctive guitar stylings, which use the same kind of repetitive motif strategies as the choral chants. Other Les Filles de Illighadad’s albums end with village-wide choral jamouts. But the trio plays it straight in Brooklyn, without the benefit of a village full of people that know how to respond to the call and call for the response.

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