Alison Hadley Photos
From the front man to They and the Children, to employees of Wallingford’s Redscroll Records, to many a jean-jacketed, patch-adorned holder of the proverbial ‘gansett tallboy, all came out to the State House to see Les Filles de Illighadad. “So many people from so many parts of my life are talking about this band!” exclaimed Sarah Prown, citing figures from celebrated fiddler Bruce Molsky to New Haven-based friends on Facebook. On tour from Niger, Les Filles were in New Haven for the first time, and a very broad swath of the Elm City’s musical community came out to greet them.
Despite the chilly Wednesday weather and verge-of-committal rain in the sky, the State House was packed well before local psych outfit Headroom — Kryssi Battalene, Rick Omonte, Ross Menze, David Shapiro, and Stefan Christensen — took the stage, bringing heavy jams that, while stylistically very different than the music Les Filles would later share, felt correct as an exemplar of everything the State House does right. Not only does it pair local with international, but it finds intersections in music that aren’t immediately apparent and make for a more consuming musical journey for it. The fuzzed out, intricate psych jams painted a landscape that highlighted a different sort of zoned-out jam for Les Filles, and the crowd resonated with it, swaying back and forth.
After the set break, as those who stepped back to preserve their ears crowded forward to see the main event, Les Filles de Illighadad — Fatou Seidi Ghali, Alamnou Akrouni, Fatimata Ahmadelher, and Ahmoudou Madassane — took the stage: a tende, a calabash, and two guitars. The scintillating rhythm that doubled upon itself with call and response lyrics hypnotized the crowd, exciting them even as they let wave after wave of lyric crash upon them. Les Filles may be similar to other musicians of the region, including Mdou Moctar, who has made New Haven a stop several times in the past few years. But the band stands alone as a group led by women, and featuring the percussive beats associated with the style known as tende, adding a danceable rhythmic backbeat to the guitar stylings of Ghali.
The energy shifted from trancelike to party as the evening meandered on, with the calabash beat growing ever more insistent that we clap our hands, locking into this stationary march of celebration. Les Filles egged us on, clapping over us, releasing ululating cries on the off beat to amp up the room even more. Everyone celebrated. Everyone danced. Everyone clapped to the inexorable beat of the booming calabash — a gourd suspended in a washbasin of water, mic’d to mimic a bass drum in the visceral punch it elicited.
That Les Filles are the only known woman-led Tuareg band — brought to us by the ever-prescient Sahel Sounds record label — has rendered them ambassadors of sorts to another side of Tuareg music not often seen in male-dominated groups. The inclusion of the female vocal timbre alone created an entirely different feel to the music, and the percussion was largely unique, particularly the tende, which made its first appearance at the State House, despite Sahel Sounds practically having a residency there.
The world beat series at the State House, curated by Rick Omonte, has taken us on a journey from the Sahara to the Amazon, from Haiti to Egypt. It is always worth seeing where it will take us next on its quest to find music that pushes the boundaries between genres.
