Blind Mali couple eyeing world domination

By Nigel Williamson

LONDON (Billboard) – A new album by a blindhusband-and-wife duo from the west African nation of Mali isthe latest world music project being marketed to a mainstreamaudience.

Since the late 1990s, when American musician Ry Cooder’scollaboration with Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club sold 7million albums, executives working with world music have soughta record with similar crossover potential.

Music business veteran Emmanuel de Buretel believes he hasfound that album with Amadou & Mariam’s “Dimanche a Bamako,”which combines the duo’s roots music with pop production fromManu Chao, the former frontman of French alternative rock/rootsact Mano Negra.

The record is the first release on de Buretel’s Paris-basedlabel, Because Music, which is distributed internationally byWarner Music. Warner’s boutique Nonesuch label will release thealbum in the United States in late August.

“‘Buena Vista’ became the ultimate coffee-table album,”says de Buretel, former president of EMI Continental Europe,”and this record has the same feel to me. It’s not ‘worldmusic.’ It’s a record any rock’n'roll fan would enjoy.”

The Chao connection should aid sales outside France, saysPhilippa Morgan, London-based world music buyer for HMV U.K. &Ireland. His involvement has given Amadou & Mariam “more of acommercial edge,” she says.

“Amadou & Mariam have been touted as the next big thing forquite a long time,” Morgan notes. “It has just been a questionof breaking an album here, rather than on mainland Europe,where they’ve been established for ages.”

HMV is stocking the album in all 200 of its stores, shesays.

De Buretel says “Dimanche a Bamako” has shipped almost200,000 units in France since its November 2004 release. Heexpects global sales to exceed 500,000 units by year’s end.”It’s going to be a very long-term album,” de Buretel says.”They’re going to be touring in all territories and it’s justgoing to carry on growing.”

The current attention represents a spectacular turnaroundfor guitarist Amadou Bagayoko and singer Mariam Doumbia.

They met in 1977 at a school for the blind in Bamako, Mali,and began performing together three years later. Afterreleasing a number of cassettes in Africa, they signed toUniversal France in 1997. Their three albums for the label werecritically acclaimed but failed to make a wide impact; thelabel says the last one, “Wati” (2003), shipped just 15,000units worldwide.

However, de Buretel was convinced of the act’s potential.”When I heard they were available and making a record with ManuChao, I was determined to get them,” he recalls.

Chao says he first heard the African duo in 2003 on his carradio and played their records “around the clock” for thefollowing year. He describes their recording sessions in Parisand Mali as “finding points of dialogue, a kind of meltingtogether of styles.”

Chao was easy to work with, Bagayoko says. “We have asimilar approach. We create music according to the vibes aroundus at the time, and he’s the same.”

Reuters/Billboard