The first five seconds of Wassulu Don sound like something from the Detroit blues era of the 1940s that brought us the world of John Lee Hooker. Then the voice of Malian superstar Oumou Sangar\u00e9 drops in while a kamele ngoni riff from Mamadou Sidibe circulates behind her, just beneath handclaps and some scorching Hooker-esque guitar courtesy of Pascal Dana\u00eb.<\/p>\n
Then Frenchman Laurent Vernerey\u2019s thick bass arrives, sparse at first but building to take control of a rhythm in which the folk music of the West African Wassoulou region rubs up against American folk.<\/p>\n
The melding of these two worlds is at the heart of Sangar\u00e9\u2019s new album Timbuktu, which dropped on World Circuit Records at the end of April. It is most evident in the trans-Atlantic interplay between Dana\u00eb\u2019s guitar and Sidibe\u2019s ngoni.<\/p>\n
Dana\u00eb is a French guitarist and composer, with roots in Guadeloupe, while Sidibe has been Sangar\u00e9\u2019s kamele ngoni player since the start of her career more than 30 years ago.<\/p>\n
The love song Kanou is an exquisitely arranged string piece, where Sidibe\u2019s ngoni, Cheick Diabate\u2019s banjo and Dana\u00eb\u2019s slide guitar and dobro combine to spectacular effect. On Degui N\u2019Kelena, Dana\u00eb\u2019s gorgeous slide guitar punctuates Sangar\u00e9\u2019s vocals, while Sidibe provides a stunning bedrock of shimmering ngoni.<\/p>\n
The songbird of Wassoulou
\nBorn in 1968, Sangar\u00e9 was already a West African superstar with the release of her first cassette tape Moussolou at 21. Her music was rooted in the traditions of the Wassoulou region, where southwestern Mali, eastern Guinea and northwestern Ivory Coast meet.<\/p>\n
Moussolou, which translates as \u201cthe women\u201d in Bambara, quickly established Sangar\u00e9 as an African feminist icon with her songs about the evils of polygamy, forced marriage and female genital mutilation. It was clear that Sangar\u00e9, known today as the songbird of Wassoulou, had a voice to be reckoned with, so it was hardly surprising that World Circuit Records came calling.<\/p>\n
World Circuit would reissue Moussolou in 1990 and follow it with Sangar\u00e9\u2019s 1993 album Ko Sira. Her third album Worotan was her major label debut.<\/p>\n
Dropping on Warner\u2019s Nonesuch label in 1996, Worotan saw Sangar\u00e9 breaking the traditional mould of her first two albums ever so slightly, by including a horn section for the first time, allowing for a more soulful sound. However, her music remained rooted in the taut rhythms of the Wassoulou.<\/p>\n
Then, as the 1990s moved into the 2000s, things went quiet on the Sangar\u00e9 front. She had pulled back from her music career, choosing to focus on business ventures and humanitarian pursuits, which continue today.<\/p>\n
An eight-year cycle
\nSangar\u00e9\u2019s career may have begun with three albums in seven years, but it was an eight-year wait for 2009\u2019s Seya, which featured a stunning 47 collaborators.<\/p>\n
Joining Sangar\u00e9 on what was at the time her best album were legends such Malian composer Cheick-Tidiane Seck, James Brown alumni Pee Wee Ellis and Fred Wesley, Rail Band guitarist Djelimady Tounkara and afrobeat drummer Tony Allen.<\/p>\n
Seya was nominated for the best contemporary world music album at the Grammy Awards in 2010, ultimately losing out to labelmates Amadou & Mariam\u2019s fantastic Welcome To Mali.<\/p>\n
With a business empire and humanitarian pursuits demanding more and more of her time, the gestation period for each batch of new Sangar\u00e9 songs was settling into an eight-year cycle. The next Sangar\u00e9 record Mogoya arrived in May 2017, on Laurent Bizot\u2019s label No Format.<\/p>\n
Mogoya saw Sangar\u00e9 striking out in a stripped back, more experimental direction. The traditional sounds of the ngoni, karignan and calabash were joined by synthesisers, snaking electric guitar and distorted electric piano under the watchful eyes of French production team A.l.b.e.r.t, which had worked previously with alt-rockers Franz Ferdinand.<\/p>\n
The album was followed in 2018 by Mogoya Remixed and in 2020 by Acoustic. The former presented reworkings by the likes of French jazz-house purveyor St Germain, British sound artist Auntie Flo and South Africa\u2019s Spoek Mathambo. The latter presented stripped-back acoustic versions of the songs, recorded live in the studio over two days.<\/p>\n
Locked down in Baltimore
\nIn March 2020, three months before Acoustic was scheduled for release, Sangar\u00e9 arrived in the United States for what was meant to be a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n
As the world suddenly went into Covid-19 lockdowns, she found herself stranded in New York. As she told online magazine World Music Central in May, Sangar\u00e9 ended up in the city of Baltimore. \u201cSomething in that city drew me in straight away. I felt so good there that I bought a house.\u201d It was in this house in Baltimore that 10 of the 11 songs that make up her new record Timbuktu were written, alongside Sidibe.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince 1990, I\u2019ve never had a chance to cut myself off from the world and devote myself exclusively to music,\u201d Sangar\u00e9 told World Music Central. \u201cI think you feel it in the music, but also in the lyrics, which are the fruits of all those moments when I was able to withdraw into myself and meditate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sangar\u00e9 and Sidibe began recording the new songs in Baltimore, which then went to Eli\u00e9ser Oubda and Nicolas Qu\u00e9r\u00e9 in Mali and France respectively for further work.<\/p>\n
Qu\u00e9r\u00e9, a French producer and engineer, co-produces Timbuktu alongside Dana\u00eb, who has worked with stars such as Peter Gabriel, Gilberto Gil, Youssou N\u2019Dour and Neneh Cherry over the years.<\/p>\n
Trans-Atlantic dialogue
\nThe two producers can be found all over the album as musicians, too. Qu\u00e9r\u00e9 pops up on piano, clarinet, keyboards, synthesisers and percussion while Dana\u00eb features on dobro, guitar, keyboards, piano, percussion, slide guitar, synthesisers and backing vocals. But there is still space for other star guests.<\/p>\n
World-renowned Balafon virtuoso Balla Kouyat\u00e9 stars on K\u00eal\u00ea Magni, locking into a powerful groove with Sidibe\u2019s ngoni to create a fiery song punctuated by Dana\u00eb\u2019s distorted guitar riffs and haunting slide guitar runs. It\u2019s a fitting musical body for a song that addresses the violence that has gripped Mali in the recent past.<\/p>\n
As the album comes to a close with Sabou Dogon\u00e9, an ancestral song of Wassoulou that Sangar\u00e9 sings over strange ambient church organ sounds and synth pads, the sheer scope of what she has achieved comes into view.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s clear that Sangar\u00e9 has created a fascinating album engaged in a trans-Atlantic dialogue like a handful of other great albums that came before it. These include Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder\u2019s 1994 collaboration Talking Timbuktu, Taj Mahal and Toumani Diabate\u2019s 1999 collaboration Kulunjan and World Circuit\u2019s 2010 album AfroCubism, which features Cuban guitarist Eliades Ochoa alongside Malian ngoni maestro Bassekou Kouyat\u00e9 and the legendary Tounkara.<\/p>\n
While these records have already achieved classic status and Timbuktu is less than a month old, when we sit back many years from now and survey Sangar\u00e9\u2019s full musical career, Timbuktu will be without doubt a landmark album that we look back at with awe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Malian superstar\u2019s new album Timbuktu is a thrilling fusion of folk music from West Africa and the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12963,"featured_media":9095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,31],"tags":[7,14,32],"class_list":{"0":"post-9098","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"category-music","9":"tag-apie-project","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"yoast_head":"\n