She is strong, Oumou Sangaré, both literally and figuratively. At 54, the Malian diva – arguably the greatest African female voice of recent decades – is not content to inspire a Beyoncé (who sampled her) or an Aya Nakamura (who pays homage to her in an eponymous title ). With Timbuktushe innovates once once more: following an electro dressing, then acoustic of the traditional music of her native Wassoulou, here she adorns it with blues in this thirteenth album.
And blues pregnant, finely chiselled by the guitars of Pascal Danaë (Delgres) who produced this opus with Nicolas Quéré. Timbuktu has no equal, it does not resemble the blues of Ali Farka Touré or that of Boubacar Traoré or even that of Tinariwen. By establishing a sumptuous dialogue between the strings of the kamele ngoni (small Malian harp) and those of the dobro guitar (resonator guitar), he celebrates the African-American nuptials of the cotton fields and the bush of the donso hunters.
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“It’s true, I don’t like barriers between things. My life is open, my music too. The mix is always positive for me,” admits the one who made this music from southern Mali known to the whole world. Originally, Wassoulou was built on interbreeding. “We are Fulani who left the north of the country behind the oxen to go down to its extreme south summarizes the diva. Arriving among the Malinkés, the Fulani gave women as wives and this marriage, we hear it in our music, is what gives it its charm. It brings together three cultures – Malinké, Bambara, Fulani – many rhythms, it is rich. » This region, neglected by the government and devoid of hotel infrastructure, Oumou Sangaré carries it so much in her heart that she has endowed it with a camp and a festival, the FIWA (Wassulu International Festival), to promote it. This year, the event welcomed 400,000 people, it has become the most important music festival in Mali.
It is however very far from there that was born Timbuktu. In 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, the artist finds herself stuck in New York for three months. She takes refuge in Baltimore, in peace, where, in the company of Mamadou Sidibé, ngoni player living in the United States and fellow traveler from her beginnings, she gives shape to this album. Full of nostalgia, touched by the situation in which Mali is bogged down, between terrorism and closed schools, Oumou Sangaré writes regarding war, neglected children, gossip, the fate of women. From Paris, Pascal Danaë accompanies him, lays down his slide guitar which marries the inflections of his voice. Sensual curves, majestic interlacings. The lament is haunting when Oumou sings Timbuktu, this city in northern Mali, a symbol of scholarship, attacked by the Islamists, abandoned by the state. An ode to his damaged country.
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“It’s my way of participating in their pain suits the diva. All these innocent lives that fall every day in the North… As Ambassador of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, I owe them this cry from the heart addressed to the authorities concerned: you are great people , sit around a table, talk. It is our role, men and women of culture, to appease hearts, to bring people to reason. » Never cold-eyed, Oumou Sangaré, nor tongue in his pocket when it comes to being indignant. Even if she observes the respect and the modesty that her culture imposes, she admits to challenge the leaders directly in this album to ask them “open your eyes and do something” regarding the situation of women and children in its title Demissimw.
Because her fight, she has always led it first for women. Abandoned by her father, a water seller then a singer from an early age to provide for the needs of her siblings, she has this fever in her heart: to improve the status of women in Africa. “She has changed little even if there have been improvements”, confides the one who created her foundation following marauding for nights in the streets of Bamako to treat women and children in distress. Today, his commitment goes beyond borders and everywhere in the world his fight hits the bull’s eye. “One day, I went to sing in Mexico she remembers. At the airport, more than 400 women came to welcome me: they knew me, followed my fight and told me what was happening at home. Women are humiliated there in a terrifying way, much worse than in Africa. We can go so far as to exchange a girl for a bottle of wine…”
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In the title Degui N’KelenaOumou Sangaré urges women to learn to live alone, the only solution according to her to arm themselves and flourish. “I had some hard times in my life, she breathes, et I drew my resilience from my loneliness, by facing it. Today, I am stronger than the blows. » Recently, the singer took her first steps in the cinema, in the next film by Maïmouna Doucouré, Hawa (Amazon Prime Video). A new playground that she loved. She holds the role of a grandmother, a story of women once more. “I am already a grandmother in real life, of three princesses, it made things easier for me! she laughs. My son, my only child, got married to a woman from Timbuktu. He is black, she is Arab. Do you see the crossbreeding between the north and the south? He keeps on ! »
Timbuktu by Oumou Sangaré, World Circuit / BMG.
Oumou Sangaré will be in concert on July 15 at the Souths in Arles then on tour in France from September. Ici all dates.
