An Explorer of a New Frontier in World Music

"What we are hearing hasn't been affected by James Brown or Jimi Hendrix or Bob Dylan," Jack Carneal says of the Malian music he's promoting. (By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)
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The Seattle-based Sublime Frequencies label has become the flagship of such handmade projects, taking down everything from Saharan bar rock to Syrian techno. They've even updated Bowles's old work with their own collection of Moroccan radio transmissions.

"I'm really aiming for a gut punch, a visceral epiphany that music can communicate," explains Sublime's Hisham Mayet. "I'm interested in an intensity of a performance, not an archival one."

Brian Shimkovitz, the blogger behind Awesome Tapes From Africa, sees Carneal's work as an example of the new form. "I think his records are important. They capture the real way people hear music," he explains. "His own recordings sound exactly the way things sound over there."

Carneal paired "Bougouni Yaalali" with releases of a 42-minute story song by the griot Daouda Dembele, and Pekos and Yoro Diallo's clanging, sparse blues -- essentially dubs of dubs from one boombox to another.

If Carneal has one regret, it's that he dubbed without keeping records, without receiving consent. He says all of the profits from the CDs remain in a Bank of America account called the Yaala Yaala Rural Musicians' Collective.

Carneal has spent serious time trying to track down the artists. He's e-mailed nonprofits and Peace Corps volunteers and contacted friends of friends, getting as close as locating one of the musicians' brothers.

"I want to do right. I want to keep doing it. Another friend said, 'Well, you should have done it right from the start,' " Carneal says. "And there's some truth to that."

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Yoro Sidibe's home is at the corner of two trash-lined dirt roads in Bamako. Rooms built of mud, wood and cement ring a dirt courtyard. There is no running water or electricity.

When he was 14, he began to practice the ngoni in secret. He would go to a cave to play, Sidibe says via cellphone and translator. "I would go inside it," he says, "and eat there and do my research there. It was very difficult -- the thing that you are looking for, that I was seeking -- this guarded knowledge. Those things can not be given in an easy way."

Roughly 40 people live with Sidibe. It is his job to provide for them. Sidibe says he has done 24 performances in the past month. He is a hard man to track down.