"I grew up with Oumou Sangaré's music. Oumou is the youngest icon that we have that the world knows. She's the one that really took this tradition to the world. I'm very proud of her because I'm following what she started. It's important to share what we have - our culture, and the image of a female on stage. She's beautiful, so elegant, and also has such a great voice. She sings deeply and in a traditional style, and to reach the world with this style of music, it wasn't easy. The fact that she's singing in Bambara, and also using this traditional instrument - which is the Kamele Ngoni - maybe she wouldn't be understood. But she did it. So today we follow the same path. Because after her you don't have any doubt, you know that it's possible."

"We put this one out into the world and we got hundreds and hundreds of responses saying “of course.” It was perfect for us. The lead is really sincere, and everyone says he’s a great guy. A tae kwon do champion. And he has not only a tae kwon do team — which are all these guys who he lives with in a house — but they’re also a band, and they all go to a junior college in Florida. The music is as hammy as possible and the guys never wear their shirts — even on stage, shirtless through almost the whole film. And they seem to have no compunction over killing people who get in their way, and yet they’re all, like, loving friends, and delightful at the end. Even though the trail of killing is miles long."

"I saw Tinariwen by accident at the Cambridge Folk Festival some time in my early 20s. I had a massive hangover, so went to sit in the artists' bit at Cambridge, this bit on the side of the stage where you can see the bands play. I wasn't really paying attention to start with – it was a bad hangover– but slowly but surely this amazing this happened. I was draw in, then hooked in, then totally hypnotised by this music that crashed over me in my little fog. The music had so much forward momentum, and the guitars had so much space, it was like I was being taken off somewhere. It was the most transcendental experience. I love the textural stuff on this record especially – the different types of percussion, the clapping, the chorus singing. The whole thing ebbs and flows. 

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