M’berra. A visionary trip by an artist searching for a new language of storytelling.
This is the sound, the story, of the M’berra Ensemble, a collective of Malian musicians from the M’berra Refugee Camp in southeast Mauritania, and Italian producer and electro-shaman Khalab. In a sprawling tent city rising out of the desert, out of nothingness, at the border with Mali in West Africa, brought together by spirit and circumstance, the group’s Arab and Tuareg members — some unknown, some who have previously toured Europe — find solace and beauty in music and song.
There are stories here. There are memories and dreams, keepsakes and wishes. There are truths told straight and fashioned into shapes. There is struggle and resilience. There is humanity. Throughout, there is music.
Music as connection, sustenance, hope, joy. Ancient-to-future music fed by the ancestors and sent spinning through space and time. Music that bestows agency on the displaced and traumatised, opening the door of the cosmos and embracing the self-determination, the liberation, on the other side.
The vinyl edition of the album is available in a deluxe gatefold package with yellow LP and a 32-page storybook — an extraordinary visual accompaniment showing photographs of the musicians at the M’berra camp captured by French photographer Jean-Marc Caimi alongside written accounts of the project told from a number of perspectives. The album is also available digitally, and on CD (with accompanying booklet).
KHALAB
Italian electronic artist and producer Raffaele Constantino a.k.a. Khalab has developed an international reputation for his original fusion of traditional African sounds, deep bass work, jazz, and heavily layered & dense electronic textures. As a passionate researcher and advocate, Khalab has been promoting African music throughout his DJ career on the Italian club and festival scene, as a broadcaster on national Italian network Rai Radio 2, and as a music consultant, author, and event organiser. He has collaborated with the likes of Malian percussionist Baba Sissoko, and emerging icons of the new jazz scene such as Shabaka Hutchings and Moses Boyd. Most recently he experimented with field recordings from the archives of the Royal Museum for Central Africa of Bruxelles on his 2018 album Black Noise 2084. His wide-reaching musical tastes can be heard regularly on his monthly Worldwide FM show, Love from Rome, on which he takes a round trip journey between ancestral rituals and psych, deserts and spaceships.
M’BERRA ENSEMBLE
‘M’berra Ensemble’ refers to a community of musicians living in the M’berra refugee camp — some who perform as individuals, others who are a part of other bands. They took part in this musical collaboration as a way of restoring their dignity and identity as musicians, and to support and raise awareness for INTERSOS humanitarian projects in the Sahel region of West Africa.