A collective runs a cultural centre and a record company in Ségou, an unstable area of Mali. To keep the art scene alive and because ‘music and the desire to live cannot be stopped’.

Now with eight titles, available digitally, The Lost Maestros is a series from the Malian label Mieruba intended to enhance the heritage of the golden, post-independence years of Malian music.
Mieruba also releases physical albums and new material, such as the recent Diré by veteran Idrissa Soumaoro.
Mieruba is part of the activities of the Mieruba Art Center, created in 2008 in Ségou, a stone’s throw from the Niger River. Over 300 kilometres north-east of the capital Bamako, Ségou, once the capital of the Bambara Empire, today the capital of the region of the same name, is located in an unsafe area due to the activities of jihadist groups. The centre is animated by a collective that replied to us via email.

“Music is like cotton or gold: a raw material that is extracted in Mali”. Photo: Mieruba Art Centre

Malian music continues to have strong visibility internationally through world music labels. Why then the initiative of a label?
One of the reasons is the need to relocate part of the music industry in the country. Music is like cotton or gold: a raw material that is extracted in Mali. This does not mean that it is not transformed and valorised by foreign labels driven by sincere respect for Malian culture, but the time has come to ‘decolonize’ world music. It needs to be done for the good of Malian music and there is immense work to be done for the rights of musicians. The vast majority do not perceive any rights for what they have created. Beyond the big names who give prestige to Malian culture in the world thanks to foreign labels, there are many extraordinary musicians who live in absolute precariousness. We have to start from here and it’s not easy because we have to consider all the works that have been in circulation in the world for more than fifty years.
This implies a general rethinking of world music, which at the moment is based on a ‘Western’ functioning that does not exactly reflect the reality of the local culture.

 How did the cultural centre come about?
The project of the centre and the label were born together because they feed off each other: The Lost Maestros series is the foundation of all of Mieruba. Mangala Camara, who returned to Mali after twenty years of precarious employment in France, gave the first impulse – as well as Askia Modibo, returning from France where he had not found the space to express himself. He therefore felt the need for a local reality that could give voice and pay respect to artists who marked the golden era in which the fusion of tradition and modernity was experimented, and who have much to pass on to the new generation.

“The Lost Maestros series is the foundation of all of Mieruba”. Photo: Mieruba Art Centre

The situation of the region is not an easy one…
The initial idea was that of a meeting place between these great artists, the new generation and foreign artists. Before the war, many stars came to Mali (Bono, Damon Albarn, Robert Plant…) to ‘learn’ something. The hypothesis was to live on the fruit of these meetings, also on an economic level. Then the worsening of security conditions made the project unfeasible in the terms imagined. But despite the difficulties it was not possible to stop, due to the energy already spent and because Mieruba was becoming a point of reference, and the failure of the project would be a loss for the community of Ségou and for the Malian art scene. In a moment of general crisis, there is more reason than ever to spread music, and to do so from Ségou, a city at the crossroads between
north and south.

What projects are you running?
To have an international outlet we started a collaboration with a French vinyl pressing company and its label Deviation Records. With them, we published the first volume of the anthology The Lost Maestros and the first of the collection of songs by the legendary Super Biton de Ségou orchestra. We plan to publish the second volume of both of these. However, we have also started to distribute independently in digital and physical formats. In 2022, Mieruba received its first economic contribution from the AWA fund financed by the European Union and managed by the Fondation sur le Niger – considered an important reality for Ségou and all of Mali, which deals with culture and organizes the Festival sur le Niger, that every year fills the city with joy.

“Mieruba wants to become a reference first and foremost for local artists, to perform but also to get to know each other and rehearse”. Photo: Mieruba Art Centre

There are no longer many foreign tourists, but the festival is aimed primarily at the inhabitants and is an example of how, despite all the difficulties, music, and the desire to live, cannot be stopped.
Mieruba wants to become a reference first and foremost for local artists, to perform but also to get to know each other and rehearse.
We are completing a space dedicated to live performances and last September, as part of the Pacific Fusion #2 project, we had young musicians of varied origins in residence who, under the guidance of two members of Super Biton, worked to fuse different traditions in the name of peace and diversity.

What is happening in the music scene in the city?
There were once concerts in all the maquis (informal venues, ed.) of the city, but few survive, like the historic Mobaso. Painfully, some musicians moved to Bamako, but many are still here and okra – the music at weddings – remains a source of income. As throughout Mali, the new generation is also interested in rap, and small recording studios are widespread in the city; however, these energies are dispersed, and the necessary framework to achieve the quality they can easily aspire to, is often lacking. Despite everything, there is perhaps no better place in the world to continue the project and the dream of a cultural centre from which music can radiate. Music is Mali’s wealth and its weapon
for peace and prosperity.

Marcello Lorrai

For some years now, the Nigerian and Ghanaian Afrobeats music scene has taken on global dimensions in terms of reach, acceptance
and impact.

Increasingly, the yardstick for measuring the success of an Afrobeats artist is the level of international success he or she enjoys. It means not only collaborating with leading music superstars from around the world but also filling prestigious arenas in metropolises such as London, Amsterdam, Paris, and New York. This also involves recording, distribution and sponsorship deals with the largest companies involved in the music and entertainment business.
The speed with which Afrobeats stars churned out their hits was astonishing. For a while, it might have seemed that this scene would soon peter out and eventually give way to other interesting genres such as amapiano, the subgenre of house music born in South Africa, which fuses different styles such as R&B, kwaito, soul, gospel, and indeed house. In reality, Afrobeats musicians have simply incorporated amapiano as part of their ever-growing repertoire.
This demonstrates not only the versatility of the artists but also the resilience of this genre of music.

Tiwa Savage performing at the Mavin Industry “Nite” Concert in Nigeria. CC BY-SA 3.0/TCD

The first wave of great Afrobeats artists includes P-Square, D’banj, Flavor, Timaya, and Tuface. Those were followed by the likes of Wizkid, Olamide, Sarkodie (Ghana), and Davido. And then it was the turn of Burna Boy, Yemi Alade, Tiwa Savage, Patoranking, Simi, and Mr Eazi.
While many of these artists have achieved viral successes, some of which have had a global impact like Alade’s Johnny, the latest generation of Afrobeats stars has brought even greater depth to the genre. Among the hottest artists are C-Kay, Rema, Fireboy DML, Ayra Starr, Ruger, Joeboy, and Asake. All of them are touring all over Africa, as well as shooting their elaborately plotted music videos in exotic locations abroad. Asake, in particular, not only does successful tours in the US and UK, but shoots his intricate videos – made mostly by the ubiquitous TG Omori
– almost exclusively in the US. Last August he held major shows
at the O2 Arena in London.

Tems, the voice
On the other hand, Tems’ rise as a current Afrobeats star has been nothing short of meteoric. When the smoky-voiced Nigerian singer and her compatriot Rema were announced as part of the line-up for the August 2023 edition of Lollapalooza, their already notable international profile was cemented even further. Furthermore, Tems, who has already won two BET Awards, was nominated in three different categories for the 2023 edition of the BET Awards in the United States. Tems is something of an enigma: shy, reserved, and sexy. Nigerian Afrobeats superstar Wizkid launched it globally with his 2020 hit Essence, an R&B-influenced track that wowed audiences across multiple continents. The hit was even remixed to include Justin Bieber.
The 28-year-old Tems creates a pleasant Sade-style atmosphere (very successful Anglo-Nigerian singer in the 1980s, ed.), but also more captivating than the latter.The speed with which she has won the favour of the American public is unprecedented for Nigerian singers, which include artists of the calibre of Tiwa Savage, Yemi Alade, Simi, and younger aspirants such as Ayra Starr, Fave, etc. On stage Savage, Alade, and Starr are exuberant performers.

Temilade Openiyi, known professionally as Tems. CC BY-SA 4.0/NdaniTV

Tems, on the other hand, seems to have a strength within her that releases in songs of emotional intensity, desire, and adventure. Rather than express herself in an ecstasy of dance and raw theatricality, she reserves acrobatics for the deep, soothing flourishes she undertakes with her extraordinary voice. In 2020, she released her first EP, For Broken Ears, which made her mark on the Nigerian music scene. The 2021 song If Orange Was a Place had an even stronger impact, which reverberated beyond Nigerian shores.
She has collaborated with heavy hitters in the American music industry like Khalid, Brent Faiyaz, Drake, and Future; so far, these overseas releases have been lucky. This doesn’t usually happen to African artists who, hoping to achieve big results, venture into the American music market. In most cases, in an effort to conquer new audiences, they seem to lose themselves and their creative spirit, in a game similar to Russian roulette. Many seek their fortune in America full of illusions and expectations. Of course, they also have to meet the changing demands of record labels and their managers. Divergent and often competing interests can drag artists down into a lack of success and even total failure. And once they return to Africa it may happen that they are no longer able to recover their audience, which in the meantime has followed new trends.

In the United States
Elaine, for example, the sensual South African R&B singer, left for the United States and returned without having a great artistic streak anymore. She has now embraced the amapiano, thus hoping to reconnect with her home audience. Several years ago, Nigerian megastars Davido and Wizkid also flew to the United States.
In particular, Davido came out with several pieces designed for the US market, which did well in Africa but did not achieve the desired results across the Atlantic.
In 2017, however, Davido hit the mark in the USA, as well as in Canada and France, with the hit Fall, a song that didn’t seem to promise much. It almost seems that Afrobeats, now one of the main ingredients in the programming of many Western radios, however, needs to be adapted to find wider acceptance outside Africa. In reality, numerous niche spaces have been created for Afrobeats as has happened for reggae. However, as long as the genre retains the mould and character of tropical Africa, it will lag behind Western pop music.

Davido in concert. CC BY-SA 4.0/Peter Verwimp

This in itself is not worrying. In fact, the biggest African stars, Davido, Burna Boy, Diamond Platinumz (Tanzania), Flavour, Rayvanny (Tanzania), Harmonize (Tanzania), Fally Ipupa (RD Congo), Sarkodie, Ferre Gola (RDC), Stonebwoy (Ghana), Shatta Wale (Ghana), and Wizkid have established themselves on the continent, in Europe, in South America, and the Caribbean – markets that are more than sufficient today for those who intend to build a lasting career. In Found, her song featuring Brent Faiyaz, Tems describes the inner turmoil between her and her lover, as they seek a solution to their differences. With her remarkable performance, Tems proved that she is capable of not selling herself short when she wants to engage with American listeners. However, she is not always like this. She has, among other things, composed a song for Rihanna and collaborated with Beyoncé and Grace Jones. Additionally, her performances and compositions have won numerous prestigious awards in the United States. In any case, the international musical scenario that many African artists have to deal with is certainly not easy. However, it will be interesting to see how Tems manages the challenge of an international career. What is certain is that there will always be new Afrobeats talents with fresh ideas, ready to take up the baton. (Open Photo: 123rf)

Sanya Osha