The album arrives in the wake of the hardline Islamic insurgency that threatened a ban on music in the north of Mali. With this album, Toumani aims "to show the positive side of Mali," to reassert the legacy of a country with access to untold musical riches. The songs are named, in griot tradition, to honor various people, places or events. The playing is dazzling. Toumani and Sidiki communicate telepathically, finishing of each other s musical sentences. The kora, often the quietest of instruments, is here played with verve, attack, groove, wit, swing, bounce, ecstatic excitement and exquisite intimacy and always with a flowing pulse and groove.