Amadou Bagayoko (1954-2025), Malian guitarist, singer and composer of the famed duo Amadou & Mariam – often known as “the blind couple of Mali” – handed away on 4 April in Bamako. He was 70.
The married singers, who met when she was 18 and he 21, took conventional Mali music and blended it with western rock and lots of different influences to form a complete new sound that was each wealthy and playful. They might promote hundreds of thousands of albums for hits like Sunday in Bamako and Sabali.
They might tour the world, opening the 2006 males’s soccer World Cup, closing the 2024 Paralympics, singing at former US president Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize live performance, successful awards alongside the way in which.
Regardless of this fame, they remained tireless activists for Africans with disabilities. They had been identified and admired at house for his or her integrity, the place Amadou’s passing is way lamented.
As a musician and professor of music with a analysis deal with Mali’s music, I met and interviewed Amadou a number of instances. His passing heralds the tip of an period for Mali’s long-held musical dominance within the worldwide market.
Who’re Amadou & Mariam?
Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia had been each devoted promoters of the work of the Institute for the Blind in Bamako, the place they’d first met within the Nineteen Seventies as college students and went on to be music lecturers. They married in 1980 and remained inseparable, forming Amadou & Mariam.
Their hit songs mixed the musical traditions of the southern a part of Mali, the place they each got here from (Bougouni, Sikasso) with components from rock, reggae, Cuban rhythms, and extra – all remodeled by means of their very own ingenuity, but additionally, afterward, by the concepts of influential producers.
The truth is, the surnames Bagayoko and Doumbia are each from the traditional lineage (referred to as Boula) of blacksmiths that date again to the time of the emperor Sunjata Keita, who based the Mali empire in 1235. The blacksmiths (numu) had been typically highly effective kings. This shared heritage within the noble previous of the blacksmiths is important of their musical synergy.
Amadou Bagayoko
Amadou’s profession spanned greater than 5 a long time, starting within the early Nineteen Seventies when he performed electrical guitar in a number of influential Malian dance bands of the time, together with Les Ambassadeurs, fronted by the legendary singer Salif Keita.
President Moussa Traoré’s 23-year navy regime from 1968 to 1991 favoured the voices of the griots. These hereditary musicians sang the praises of the folks in energy in a flowery, strident type.
The life of those dance bands was on the wane by the late Eighties, which is when “la grand couple aveugle du Mali” (the blind couple of Mali) had been launched – at first, two easy voices accompanied by Amadou’s guitar, recorded on cassette.
On the finish of Traore’s rule, Amadou & Mariam’s music responded to the brand new spirit of democracy that the nation was hungry for.
There have been many issues that set this duo other than different musicians of the area. They weren’t griots. Their lyrics are sometimes concerning the energy of affection – not an easy subject in a rustic the place polygyny (as much as 4 wives, as permitted by Islam) is the norm.
Their presence on stage as a blind couple, wanting affectionate and mutually supportive, of their stylish, coordinated apparel, additionally raised the profile of individuals with disabilities. Their melodies had been catchy and upbeat.
Assembly Amadou and Mariam
Sorting by means of my analysis not too long ago I got here throughout a photograph I’d taken of them on my previous slides, buried in my archives. It was a revelation to see it once more.
Amadou and Mariam in 1992 in Bamako on the day the writer first met them.
Courtesy Lucy Durán
I took the picture, with their permission, after I first met Amadou and Mariam in 1992 in Bamako. It was on the recording studio that’s now often known as Bogolan, the place they had been hoping, on the time, to make some recordings.
It exhibits Amadou and Mariam of their youth with pleasure and dignity, values that remained fixed for them in later years. On that first encounter, I used to be struck by their graciousness, their perception of their musical venture, and their dedication to convey it to a wider public.
I wanted on the time that I had the contacts within the document business to assist them. However they didn’t quit and so they slowly constructed up their profession, constructing on their sound and picture, which was and stays distinctive throughout the number of Malian music.
World fame
Towards all the percentages, with their conviction, expertise, sturdy melodies and good manufacturing, Amadou & Mariam grew to become vastly profitable within the early 2000s. The album that actually launched their worldwide profession was Dimanches à Bamako (Sundays in Bamako), brilliantly produced by French-Spanish singer-songwriter Manu Chao, who had had a giant worldwide hit together with his inventive and catchy album Clandestino in 1998.
He introduced a few of these manufacturing values into Amadou & Mariam’s songs. Dimanches à Bamako celebrates the colourful tradition of wedding ceremony events held within the streets of Bamako on Sundays, a day when civil marriage ceremonies are free.
Dimanches à Bamako was the primary of a number of profitable albums by Amadou & Mariam that had been produced by European producers akin to Damon Albarn, with songs like Tie ni Mousso (Husband and Spouse) that performed on the charming stage presence of Amadou & Mariam as a loyal husband and spouse. The songs had been accessible and interesting however nonetheless delivered punch.
After that first assembly in 1992, we met up once more many instances, incessantly for radio.
Mariam Doumbia (left) comforted by singer Salif Keita in the course of the funeral ceremony of her husband on 6 April.
Ousmane Makaveli/AFP/Getty Pictures
Amadou was a a lot revered and admired musician whose music reached out to audiences all over the world. He was vastly beloved and appreciated each at house and overseas, not only for his expertise and musical creativity as a wonderful guitarist and music author, but additionally for the picture that he and Mariam created on stage.
Collectively they are going to be remembered and revered for the values they characterize of their music: equality, love, perseverance towards incapacity, and reality. My condolences to Mariam.
