South of the Malian capital of Bamako is a large, dusty compound that is home to one of the country’s only two schools for the blind. There are more than 100 children here, some attending lessons, others sitting outside the dormitories, where they sleep crammed together on pieces of well-worn foam rubber.
It was here that Amadou Baga-yoko and Mariam Doumbia met 29 years ago, at the start of one of the most extraordinary success stories in African music. Now recognised as celebrities, even in a city famed for its musicians, they have come back to discuss a series of major international events they are planning to help the school, including a fund-raising concert in the compound that will involve everyone from Manu Chao to the West African rap/reggae star Tiken Jah Fakoly, along with their son Sam and his political rap band, and even members of the original school band with whom Amadou and Mariam started out.
“Parents bring blind children here and then never come back to see them. It’s like throwing children away,” Idrissa Soumaoro, former teacher and bandmate tells me.
Yet, for Amadou and Mariam, it was very different. They not only flourished at the school, where they were married three years after meeting, but used the skills they learned to launch their career. Their 2004 album Dimanche a Bamako has sold nearly 500Â 000 copies, reaching number two in France’s pop charts. The duo are about to embark on a major United Kingdom tour and have just scooped two World Music Awards in the album of the year and African act of the year categories. Amadou is delighted. “Getting an award means that the English have understood what our music is about.”
Amadou, who was blinded by cataracts as a teenager, started out playing alongside Salif Keita in legendary 1970s band Les Ambassadeurs. In 1978, he and bandmate Idrissa became music teachers at the Blind School where Amadou had learned Braille. The two set up a new band, L’Eclipse, in which they were joined by the school’s finest singer, Mariam, who had lost her sight through measles when she was six. “I was very impressed by her voice,” says Amadou. He also fell in love with her, and the pair have been singing side by side ever since.
A second band, Mirya, consisting only of blind musicians, followed. By the early 1980s they had both become so popular that Amadou found it hard to combine his teaching with concert bookings. So he and Mariam left the school and, in 1986, set off for Côte d’Ivoire, then the musical Mecca of West Africa because it had venues and recording studios. They stayed there for the next six years.
In 1988, they were invited into an Abidjan studio. The recordings — 22 songs in three days — established their reputation across West Africa. There were further sessions two years later (this time with Amadou’s guitar over-dubs and a drum machine added in) and more studio work once they moved back to Mali in 1992.
This early work is being re-released as the unlikely follow-up to the highly sophisticated Dimanche a Bamako. “It’s a chance for people to understand where we came from,” says Amadou.
The five-CD boxed set selection from the early days forms an intriguing collection of songs that shows why Amadou and Mariam are such confident live performers — they’ve been doing this for years. Even back in the 1980s, Amadou was a tight, rhythmic R&B-influenced guitarist, Mariam a fine, soulful singer, and they were both strong songwriters. Then, as now, they were writing thoughtful, at times provocative, lyrics. “It’s important for us to have a message,” says Mariam, “and people listen to us for that.”
The original sessions brought the duo fame not just in West Africa, but also among the sizeable Malian community in France. They went on to sign to a major French label and record a series of albums in which their straight-forward blend of West African blues and funk was mixed with wailing electric guitar or jazz-funk keyboards. Driving in Paris one day, Manu Chao heard them on his car radio, and their career moved up another notch.
Amadou and Mariam now live in two worlds. They have an apartment in Paris and a partly French band who will join them for their British dates. Then they have a house in Bamako, where they rehearse with the Malian band they performed with at a spectacular show on the Niger River in the ancient town of Segou in early February. Here Amadou and Mariam ended their performance with a triumphant and furious collaboration with Fakoly — who performed the angry Politic Amagni on their Dimanche a Bamako album — proving they still have their fingers firmly on the pulse of African pop. — Â