Malian musician Fadimata “Disco” Walet Oumar, with her husband, as featured in They Will Have To Kill Us First

UPDATE: The concert in Timbuktu did not go ahead as the Malian president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita declared a 10-day state of emergency following the deadly hotel attack.

Johanna Schwartz, director of They Will Have to Kill Us First, a documentary about exiled musicians in Mali, has spoken out on the attack and deaths at a hotel in the Malian capital, Bamako, today. The director has been trying to get in touch with the musicians covered in the documentary. She believes that a big concert in Timbuktu, planned for tomorrow, is still going to go ahead. Islamists have tried to stop music being played in Mali over the past few years, after they took control of parts of the country and declared it against sharia law. Many musicians fled the country.

Schwartz said: “My inbox has been flooded this morning with people wanting to know if Songhoy Blues, Disco or Khaira Arby are caught up in the hotel attack in Bamako. Songhoy Blues are right now in Paris, where they were supposed to perform this week. I wish I could say they were ‘safe in Paris’ but we all know that’s not true. Bataclan, the music venue that was attacked, is exactly the kind of venue Songhoy Blues are getting booked into these days. Khaira Arby is not in Bamako either, but in Timbuktu where a concert is planned for tomorrow evening. This will be the biggest concert in the city of Timbuktu since the music ban. (And much bigger than the street party gig that Khaira organised last year, which I filmed.) I just heard that the concert will indeed go ahead.”

She added: “An act of enormous courage from all involved. I think more than ever we need to take our cues from these great musicians, who resist these horrific attacks with every molecule in their body. They are wilfully defiant, but peacefully so. We don’t have to accept what these terror groups are trying to force upon the planet. But crucially, we need to understand why those who are accepting it are doing so. I just got off the phone with our local producer in Mali, he is calling Disco [musician Fadimata Walet Oumar] now to see where she is. A couple of his friends work at the hotel that is under attack as I type. He can’t get through to them on their phones.”

Index on Censorship has established a fund for musicians in exile in conjunction with the team behind They Will Have to Kill Us First.