Amadou & Mariam

Folila (Lim. Ed Incl. Cd) Amadou & Mariam

Welcome to Mali. Everything was already said between the lines of their previous collection. Amadou & Mariam have long cultivated the art of meeting, a sense of team play, a spirit of openness that they often put into practice with musicians from all backgrounds and styles. On trips into detours, their planetary journey have allowed the couple to forge friendships in the long term. M and Vincent Segal were their guests, Keziah Jones and K’naan also interacted, the Lebanese trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf and British guitarist Johnny Marr were invited to jam, Manu Chao and Damon Albarn produced them with skill .. No doubt Malian couple’s history is written in the plural suggestive of their affinities, a way to say beyond notes that it is time to break the blinders and push the boundaries that freeze the spirits. “Meet other people make us grow” likes to say Amadou, who had the chance to come across on stage Robert Plant and David Gilmour, two idols of his youth. Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia have developed a keen sense of otherness that rhymes with diversity. Which confirmed record after record, tour after tour, their journey through the world of music where their fan club is growing ever more. Could you imagine while they were on stage of The Transmusicales de Rennes in 1998, that ten years later Calexico, a combo brought from the plains of Arizona, would convert to “the emotional pleasure of these two hearts essential to this world", to “their hypnotic style, spirals of guitars that support social, personal, political songs"… The unlikely saga has become an unstoppable lesson to meditate : we can’t live together on this planet forgetting our differences. With Amadou & Mariam, no universalism. No, it’s even quite the opposite they show in each of their songs, in the slightest inflection. They took the gamble of “diversality” as the principle of their intentions. Their land ; Mali, which is for fifteen years one of the most attractive center of globalized music. The