New Yorker Magazine
Culture Desk
The Heavy, Meditative, and Tender Music of Les Filles de Illighadad
By Amanda Petrusich
November 11, 2019
If you listen long enough, and make yourself open enough, it is possible to reach a kind of holy place while experiencing the music of Les Filles de Illighadad.
Les Filles de Illighadad has released two albums: a self-titled LP, in 2016, and “Eghass Malan,” from 2017. Both records are heavy, meditative, and tender. At times, their work reminds me, in a not entirely illogical way, of the rhythmic, electric-guitar-based blues and fife-and-drum music of north Mississippi’s Hill Country—from players like R. L. Burnside or Otha Turner, who were directly informed by African music seeded in the American South by slaves. If you listen long enough, and make yourself open enough, it is possible to reach a kind of holy place while experiencing Les Filles. The edges of your consciousness will blur a little. The road will stop seeming so straight.