Why Sub Pop's world-music imprint will find an audience

It may never entirely shake its reputation as home of lumberjack shirts and loud guitars, but venerable Seattle label Sub Pop has added a new string to its bow – world music. Next month sees the release of I Speak Fula , the excellent second album from Mali's Bassekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba. The LP, first issued on Out Here Records last Autumn, is the debut release on Next Ambiance , an imprint under the Sub Pop umbrella set up by label boss Jonathan Poneman and presenter Jon Kertzer (who helms the Best Ambiance show on Seattle-based public radio station KEXP). Should this be a surprise? Perhaps not. This is new territory for Sub Pop, but thanks to the light-fingered, Afropop leanings of Vampire Weekend and Dirty Projectors – not to mention MP3 blogs like Awesome Tapes from Africa – there's a new, young audience out there that has been exposed to non-western sounds and might want to dig a little deeper. Nor is Sub Pop the first US indie label to dabble in African sounds – Drag City's Yaala Yaala imprint, founded in 2007, has chalked up several releases from Mali's vibrant street-music scene, some salvaged from cassettes sold for a dollar in the Bougouni shanties. And while I Speak Fula might not be immediately familiar to those weaned on the grizzled discontent of Nirvana and Mudhoney, Kouyate is considered something of a rebel in his homeland. A player of the ngoni, a traditional west African lute, he was the first musician to dispense with tradition and play the instrument standing up – a shock to the more conventional corners of Mali's music scene, but now apparently pretty much de rigueur among younger bands. I Speak Fula is released through Sub Pop on 2 February – here's a clip of Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba playing on Later … with Jools Holland last year.