On his new single “Mercury / Orgullosamente,” producer, multi-instrumentalist, and spoken-word artist Farees reaffirms his pride in his Tuareg heritage. Taken from his upcoming album Galactic Africa—out June 3 via Rez’Arts Prod—it pushes back on neo-colonialism in energetic Afrobeat fashion. “Everybody wanna dance like Africans / Be tough, be cool like Africans,” he chants. “Tryna look like Africans, talk like Africans, walk like Africans / But you’ll never be real like Africans / Now hit the drum like Africans.”
Here and throughout the record, Farees speaks from experience with international pop culture and the “world music” industry. Before striking out on his own as an independent artist, he collaborated with Saharan rock bands like Tinariwen and Terakaft, and in 2015 he released his debut solo record Mississippi to Sahara, a collection of Delta blues standards in the Assouf guitar style. In his time, he’s seen firsthand the way the business exploits African artists.
“The world music system is a neo-colonial system,” he says. “I was in that system for years, so I know what I’m talking about. I could talk about a lot of things going on with African musicians and how ‘world music’ is still a colonial system based on a shallow brand of exoticism. Africans rarely profit off of it (even GRAMMY winners or famous artists that do big tours).”
Farees’ 2020 record Border Patrol was spurred in part by racial profiling and discrimination he’s experienced touring the world. Forging the worldly grooves of Galactic Africa, by contrast, brought him back to where his music originated. "Spoken word and rap were always part of the Tuareg tradition,” he says. “We have different rhythms to heal you, mentally and physically…I reconnected with all my roots, coming back to Africa, and it cured me.”
Hear the new track below.
