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Amadou & Mariam - "Dimanche a Bamako"

Amadou & Mariam - "Dimanche a Bamako"

Sunday, 12 March 2006

I serendipitously came across this album a few months ago and it’s been in red-hot rotation ever since. The first few things you’ll read about Amadou Bagayoko & Miriam Doumbia is that they are both blind, married to each other, and have been making music together since the early 1980s (Amadou previously played guitar for the Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako since the late-1960s). They met at the Institute for Young Blind People in Bamako, Mali. Years later, the husband and wife duo travelled to the Ivory Coast to make a few cassette tapes with Nigerian producer Aliyu Maikano Adamu. I imagine since then, their soulful music has spread from Western Africa all the way to my tiny New York apartment in the blink of an eye.

Manu Chao, the multilingual, globe-trotting singer extraordinaire wrote and sang on a few songs as well as producing the album. Initially, it seemed confusing to have Chao’s signature police siren soundbites peppered throughout the album, but the more I listened to it the less it bothered me. What blew me away early on was Amadou’s guitar, which is stirring, skillful, and smooth. Many of the songs have a multi-layered sound (especially the rhythmn section), but never getting too far away from the integrity of their troubador-like lyricism.

Dimanche a Bamako (Sunday in Bamako) starts of with a little boy greeting the couple, as if on the street: “Mariam and Amadou, hello. Are things going well? How are you?” (my amateur French translation). Mariam seems to sweetly answer his call. The next track, M’Bife Balafon, is a signature Manu Chao instrumental that serves as a nice interlude between the initial lazy and sweet beginning and Amadou’s blues-blazing guitar in Coulibaly. La réalité sounds like a tour song or an anthem to a road trip of a lifetime.

Amadou & Miriam - Dimanche a Bamako Artist: Amadou & Mariam
Album: Dimanche a Bamako
Label: Nonesuch
Released: 2005

Buy this album from Amazon.com

  1. M’Bife
  2. M’Bife Balafon
  3. Coulibaly
  4. La Realite
  5. Senegal Fast Food
  6. Artistiya
  7. La Fete au Village
  8. Camions Sauvages
  9. Beaux Dimanches
  10. La Paix
  11. Djanfa
  12. Taxi Bamako
  13. Politic Amagni
  14. Gnidjougouya
  15. M’Bife Blues

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