Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A well kept secret: warm, sincere, irresistible rhythms and melodies from Africa., January 8, 2009
I really enjoyed the opening tune "Sabali" when I first heard it in Paris and immediately was won.
Damon Albarn pops up as guest producer on this remarkable set by the blind couple Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia, who have brought the music of their homeland not only to the world, but into the 21st century mainstream.
Beautiful melodies abound on an album where the couple's guitar and vocals are underscored by everything from Europop synth to string quartet and gentle electronica and from French hip-hop to Somali-Canadian rappers.
One of the highlights is the standout "Sabali", in which Albarn adds an electronic backdrop.
Amadou's guttural singing in French and raw-toned guitar animate the surging, Hammond organ-powered "Compagnon de la Vie" while Mariam's disarmingly simple delivery takes on an incantatory quality on the more traditional "Djuru", with tingling kora from Toumani Diabaté, and showcasing Amadou's guitar chimes.
Even "I Follow You", Amadou's potentially corny declaration of love in English, brings an approving smile to the lips.
If the quasi-traditional melodies become slightly monotonous, Amadou & Mariam are by no means the folky ingénues you might imagine. Their use of Western pop influences, such as Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd, to enhance the inherent bluesiness of their traditional Bamana music is entirely conscious.
Of course, there are moments when the record dont quite measure up to its aims.
The collaboration with Somali-Canadian rapper K'Naan on Africa falls rather flat and the whole album is perhaps a little too long.
But when it works, when the album catches light like on the aforementioned tracks and on "Masiteladi" and "Djama", there's an underlying earthy integrity to their music wich will not fail to capture new aficionados.
We are not talking here about 'world music', but about the product of an authentically global pop phenomenon.
It is well worth a listen, before they become too commercial and popular.
Then, after the big party in Washington, DC, with the rich and famous, it will not be a well kept secret anymore.
Rush and buy it.
Mali Koura
The Very Best of Ethiopiques
Mali Music
Wátina
The Garifuna Women's Project
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Genuinely charming. Welcome to the White House !, January 8, 2009
It seems that the duo has been invited at the President Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009.
It easy to predict the this unlikely couple will get a terrific spin wordwide, much beyond the circuit of ethnic music, becoming a first rate international music act.
This husband-and-wife duo from Mali have achieved significant crossover success in recent years, after coming to prominence with their best-selling Manu Chao-produced Dimanche a Bamako album.
Mariam Doumbia and Amadou Bagayoko are a pair of blind musicians from Mali who met at the country's Institute for the Young Blind. After finding they shared an interest in music, they started performing together in the early 1980s.
However, it wasn't until Manu Chao produced "Dimanche a Bamako" in 2004 that they blind duo hit mainstream success, becoming mascots for the current voguish rapprochement between rock and African music.
It features distinguished company with guest appearances by their countryman Toumani Diabate on kora and Somalian rapper K'Naan.
Damian Albarn, who is as responsible for drawing these disparate worlds together, produces the oriental-flavoured opening track, "Sabali", on this eagerly awaited follow-up to "Dimanche à Bamako", wrapping Mariam's high-pitched sing-song vocal in a shimmering string-led arrangement that falls somewhere between Eighties synth-pop and classic French chanson.
The effect is poignant, startlingly modern and unlike any African music we've heard before.
If nothing else here quite matches it, this is an uplifting African folk-blues collection on which the couple's warmth, resilience and patent decency as human beings shine through on every track.
From the opening beats of the opener "Sabali", "Welcome To Mali" is a record that subverts what you expect from an 'African' album.
Throughout, the songs are gloriously poppy and genuinely amazing.
There are still undeniable African sounds to the proceedings, but they are set within a context that is global.
So the listener gets to flit from the sparse coffee table beats of the Alban-produced track, through some rap to some classic R 'n' B.
The duo succeed in honouring West African musical traditions, while infusing their dynamic sound with electro funk backing tracks, vocoder vocal effects and, for the first time, a couple of English-language songs, as an example of their desire to reach an even wider audience.
My highlights: "Je Te Kiffe", "Masiteladi", "I Follow You", "Ce N'est Pas Bon" and "Sabali".
You will be completely won by this genuine, enthralling duo.
The Mande Variations
Mali Koura
Segu Blue
Aman Iman: Water is Life
La Radiolina
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not 'world' music, but music for the world --- for everyone in the world, March 31, 2009
Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia have climbed to the pinnacle of World Music. But 'Welcome to Mali', their new CD, is wrongly titled, for with this release, they've made another, more dazzling ascent to an even loftier peak --- this isn't World Music, to be filed in the Mali section. It's music from a very big world, made for everyone in the world. If you buy, download or steal no other music this year, stop right here. This is the one.
This is the one because it's the right idea at the right time: a bundle of joy for a hurting planet. It's so all-inclusive --- "an original East Coast-West Coast collaboration", a rapper friend of theirs shouts at the start of a song --- that you'll have a hard time locating this music by geographic origin. It was recorded in Paris, London, Dakar, and Senegal. It uses traditional African instruments and state-of-the art electronics. And Amadou and Mariam sing in French and English --- not that the words much matter. Right here.] As it starts, you might think you're hearing a scratchy radio broadcast from the 1930s. Then comes the plinking of a ukulele (or is it?). And then Mariam floats in --- a birdlike soprano that may not break glass, but certainly clutches your heart and your attention. Entering the room, balancing her, a French horn (or is it?). And now...but what's this? Dance-hall drumming. Synthesizer runs of electronic notes, up and down the scale.
This is harmonious, joyous music, totally accessible pop that just happens to be symphonic in its power. Its real genius is its accessibility --- it sounds so simple, so organic, that it's like a song you've always hummed (and danced to) in your private happy moments. The lyrics, for what they're worth, support Amadou and Marian's vision of a beautiful world: "La vie est belle avec toi..... je te fais un gros bisou". But even more, they're just sound. (From the lyric sheet: "La llalallallallallalallaalallaa... sabalabalabala bala bala babla.") And those sounds evoke Motown and Phil Spector as much as they do African tribal chant.
But then, Amadou and Mariam have, from the beginning, pushed beyond the music of their country. In their childhood, Mali radio played all kinds of music --- rock, salsa, whatever. After their apprenticeship, they moved to the Ivory Coast, then to Paris, where they recorded with Cubans, Colombians, Indian drummers and "an African playing American-style harmonica". It was probably inevitable that their breakthrough CD, 'Dimanche a Bamako', would be produced by Manu Chao, the musician and producer who has brilliantly melded the music of the streets with delightfully political reggae.
On 'Welcome to Mali', there are instruments you've heard on African records --- a kora harp, a Malian violin --- but you'll find a bare minimum of the chicken-scratch guitar and Mississippi Delta blues sound that have defined their homeland's music. And you'll hear none of the street sounds, ambulance sirens and happy children that made 'Dimanche a Bamako' such a huge, international hit.
'Welcome to Mali' is European, sleek, elegantly produced. It's fun to listen to, and it's even funny --- a song about the African continent describes it like a woman, and Amadou and his rap partner are quite clear they want to explore every inch of her. And, near the end, there's a wonderful joke: the title song. Anyone else might have led off with it. Here it's more like: This is a tour of the entire world, and today, kids, we're in Mali. Like it?
I haven't yet said what's usually billboarded as the key thing about Amadou and Mariam, because after three decades of making music, how much does it really matter that they are both blind? Long ago, I bet, they learned how to translate the colors and shapes in their heads into sound; like Stevie Wonder, they hear so well there's almost nothing Amadou can't play on a guitar and Mariam can't sing.
Those dark sunglasses? Yes, they serve a purpose. They are also seriously cool, a piece of the superstar uniform. And, no doubt about it, with 'Welcome to Mali', Amadou and Mariam qualify as global superstars.
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