Womad stars Amadou and Mariam talk to Scott Kara about how their musical partnership grew into a successful international career
The meeting of Amadou and Mariam more than 30 years ago in the Malian capital of Bamako is a romantic tale.
Yet Amadou, the guitar-playing half of the blind husband and wife duo, is a little coy about telling it. But while his description is brief, it's lovely.
"We met at the Institute for the Young Blind [in 1977]. Oh, Mariam had a beautiful voice, I had my guitar, we started making music together. We enjoyed it," he says through an interpreter on the phone from Paris.
And now, many years later, Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia tour the world as life partners and musical mates, taking their unique brand of trance-inducing, Malian-Saharan blues pop to the world.
Their music - with songs like the stomping electrified groove of Masiteladi and the poignant anti-poverty song Magosa from 2009's classic Welcome To Mali - cross both musical and cultural boundaries. They can play for Barack Obama one day (as they did at a Nobel Peace Prize concert in 2009), have a prime billing at arty British music event All Tomorrows' Parties the next, and then roll up to world music festival Womad - as they will do next weekend in New Plymouth. They also supported Blur at the band's Hyde Park comeback concert in 2009, toured with Coldplay in the US that same year, and most recently opened for U2 in Capetown and Johannesburg on the Irish band's 360° Tour.
As Albarn puts it on the duo's website: "I don't think there's ever been a band from Africa with whom people have engaged in quite such a way."
But typically, Amadou has a more low-key take on their success.
"We never expected to be as popular as we are now because back [in the 80s and 90s] we were just happy to be popular and known in our own environment. We never thought it would get this big one day."
Though they have been producing music together since the late 70s (which was a minimal guitar and voice style), from the late 90s they started to blend their traditional Mali influences with everything from rock and electronic music to sounds from Cuba, India and other parts of Africa. It was with 2005's Dimanche a Bamako (produced by Latin music star Manu Chao) when they started to become more widely known. But with Welcome To Mali they rose from the "dusty streets of Bamako" to superstar status.
"It happened little by little but it really started from Dimanche.
"We took bits and pieces from rock, pop, and blues, and we became pop.
"And from Dimanche we really started to come out and we met a lot of people and from that we did Welcome To Mali," he says.
One of the people they had more to do with was Mali music fan Albarn - who recorded an album in the country in 2002 called Mali Music. His musical touch is heard right from the start of Welcome To Mali, with his jaunty programmed beats and whimsical keyboards a feature of delightful opening track Sabali.
But most importantly, Amadou and Mariam continue to borrow from their Malian musical heritage which makes their music unique. It is thrilling, exotic, and uplifting Mali pop.
"Welcome To Mali is a mix of the blues and the rock music, and there is a lot of revolutionary sentiment about it. Our music is universal, and it captures the hearts of a lot of people."
Amadou went blind when he was 16 [Mariam was only 6 when she lost her sight] but he says he never let it get in the way of what he wanted to do in life - and with his music.
"It was a condition that was hard to accept but with the love of the people around me, music was a very resonant part of my voice. Even though I was blind I could still express myself, create music that people enjoyed, and say important things.
"Music connects people, countries, and cultures," he says, "but it's also our profession and a way of life for us."
LOWDOWN
Who: Amadou and Mariam
Where & when: Womad, Bowl of Brooklands, New Plymouth, March 18-20. Playing Friday, 8pm, Bowl Stage and Sunday, 10.30pm, Bowl Stage; Workshop, Saturday, 3pm, Dell Stage; Artist in conversation, Sunday, 3pm, Pinetum
Albums: Dimanche a Bamako (2005); Welcome To Mali (released 2009 in New Zealand)
- TimeOut
