Toubab Krewe joined KGNU’s Dave McIntyre, offering a glimpse into their unique blend of music. Describing their sound as “international country music,” they shared influences from around the world and performed a few of their songs. (Interview date: 1/31/2025)
Dave McIntyre: All right, and now the Toubab Krewe live right here in the KGNU studio. Just a couple questions guys. How would you verify or what would you call your music? I’ve read all kinds of things.
Toubab Krewe: So, we’ve been playing together since we were little kids, pretty much. So it’s really a combination of so much music that we’ve grown up playing together. And we’ve in the past decade, started calling it international country music.
Dave McIntyre: Okay.
Toubab Krewe: Because that sort of sums it up. It is country music and from many different countries and places in the world.
Dave McIntyre: And you’ve visited many of these countries, haven’t you, with your music?
Toubab Krewe: Quite a few, yeah. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to travel and play and learn. Stylistically we’re influenced by so much that it’s a little hard for us to figure out exactly what to call it, but probably is so for most folks, too, just to put it down to a single word.
Dave McIntyre: That’s cool, actually, in my mind. I’ve read Blending Malian American and Dirty South into a sound all your own. Afropop, Jam Beat, Sound of Liberation. Sounds like just some great world music. Instead of wasting time chatting, let’s hear some music. What do you got for us?
Toubab Krewe: Alright, thanks. Yeah, we’ll I think we’re going to start with a song that we learned from the late great Viaconte Justin Perkins, Kamel Ngoni teacher in Mali, West Africa. And this is a song that he showed us. Called Diggy.
Dave McIntyre: Alright.
[Toubab Krewe plays Diggy]
Dave McIntyre: Yeah, that’s sweet. What do you call that one?
Toubab Krewe: Diggy by Viaconte.
Dave McIntyre: I see. Nice. Can hear that Malian touch through what you’re doing, for sure. Very interesting. What else you got for us? Before we run out of time.
Toubab Krewe: Yeah, I think we’re gonna play a tune on the kora. A traditional tune called Otorele. It’s a traditional song played by many artists across West Africa, Mali, Guinea. in other places and it’s been in our repertoire for a long time. So this one features the Cora 21 string harp from West Africa. One of the Jelly or Griot instruments. That’s played by the Culture Bears. They’re passed down through generations. This is a tune called Otorele.
[Toubab Krewe play Otorele]
Dave McIntyre: Alright. Toubab Krewe. That’s a beautiful instrument. Great sound. Excellent, guys. Appreciate it. Again, it’s an 8 o’clock show tonight. It’s 21 and over at the Velvet Elk Lounge. Check it out and go see them. Got one more for us, gentlemen?
Toubab Krewe: Yes, indeed.
Dave McIntyre: Wonderful.
Toubab Krewe: So yeah, this is Toubab Krewe, quartet version. Our long time bassist Justin Kimmel’s out on a month long tour out in Europe. We actually have a special guest this weekend on keys bass. Our good friend Boram Lee from Pretty Lights and Break Science is gonna join us playing a moog sub 37 synth keys bass. So it’s gonna be a couple special shows. Really stoked to play with him. We’ve been friends for a long time. So, this is Terrence Houston here on drums. And he’s playing kind of a hybrid kit right now. It’s a pandeiro for the bass tone, a sangban kenkeni which are two different traditional drums from West Africa for those tones you hear and a couple different bell and seisei rides. And this is Drew Heller on guitar, playing a good old fender stratocaster electric. And this is Justin Perkins, who you heard on kora, on that last one. And then the kemalangoni, which is a 12 string harp from Southern Mali, specifically a pentatonic instrument. And then I’m Luke Karanta, playing djembe. Also a hand mortar shaped drum from West Africa, and a metal scraper called a karenye. Which I played on those last two numbers. And then, like I said, we’ll have Boram on keys bass tonight. Yeah, appreciate y’all having us in. Thank you guys. It’s great to be back.
Dave McIntyre: Thanks for coming. We appreciate you being here and playing live for us tonight.
Toubab Krewe: Definitely. So we’re going to do a tune called Bani actually. It was on our first record all the way back in 2005, which is our 20 year anniversary as a band. We started in early 2005. We put out our debut album in April of 2005. Yeah, it’s a special year for us. We got new music in the works. We’ve done a whole bunch of sessions lately and we have some more recording sessions planned, so we plan to put out new music very soon and we got some re-releases to do this year as well. So, looking forward to that. And yeah, this is Bani from our self titled debut. Toubab Krewe.
[Toubab Krewe plays Bani]
Dave McIntyre: Toubab Krewe live KGNU in the Kabaret room. Thanks, George, for coming in and engineering. Thank you, gentlemen. That was wonderful.
