MALI MAGIC

Fame has been a long time coming for African singing duo Amadou & Mariam, who are conquering the west after years of local success. Jim Carroll meets a most unusual musical couple from Mali

THIS could well turn out to be the sweetest, if unlikeliest, success story of 2005. For years, Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia have been creating glorious pop music without ever reaching a significant audience beyond their native Mali. Now, after the release of the magnificent Dimanche à Bamako album, the world beyond west Africa has began to wake up to the music of this married, blind couple.

It's a wonder it didn't happen sooner. Mali is one of Africa's richest sources for freewheeling music of all hues. Yet, unlike such giants as Ali Farka Toure, Toumani Diabate, Oumou Sangare or even Tinariwen, Amadou & Mariam make music which wouldn't be out of place on daytime radio. While there's a sizeable dollop of west African blues in the mix, this is infectious, feel-good pop music with exuberant shades of soul, funk reggae, hip-hop and even indie rock.

Perhaps Dimanche à Bamako is receiving widespread attention because of producer Manu Chao, who "discovered one of our tracks on the radio in Paris and he just loved what he heard," says Amadou via a translator. Chao was smitten. "I was a total fan from the word go and bought all their CDs," he said in an interview last year. "They were my big thing for the next year or two. I loved their immense sense of sweetness and gentleness. When I'd listen to them, all these ideas for melodies and backing vocals came into my head. It became a little game I played every day."

Chao met the couple and worked with them in the studio. You can hear his influence throughout the new album, as he adds astute sonic trickery and a lightness of tone to amplify the duo's pop sensibilities.

"The similarity between our music and Manu's music is in the simplicity of the lyrics and the music," says Amadou. "Manu brought a lot of Spanish and French influences with him and we were already listening to that type of music, so we were happy to put it into our music."

The result of such mixing and matching has exceeded all expectations. "We wanted to create a different sound with Manu's help because a lot of people didn't think we could sound different," says Mariam. "But we never expected this sort of response to what we did." Indeed, Dimanche à Bamako has sold nearly 150,000 copies in France alone, and it is gathering numerous critical raves in the US.

The Amadou & Mariam story began when the duo met at the Institute for Young Blind People in Bamako, Mali's capital, in 1976. Before then, Amadou had been making waves for his astonishing guitar-playing.

"When I started playing the guitar for the first time, Cuban music was the main music in Mali, so I started to practice with Cuban standards such as Guantanamera and any tracks I heard on the radio. Soon, my own tracks were on the radio, too."

Amadou played in a few bands, but his spell with Les Ambassadeurs du Motel provided the real apprenticeship. The resident band in a Bamako hotel's nightclub, Les Ambassadeurs were a 12-strong outfit fronted by Salif Keita which banged out American pop, foxtrots, rumbas and whatever else would get people dancing. "It truly was a music school for me. I played a lot of different music styles and we played almost every night in clubs or bars."

Amadou went to the Institute to learn Braille, teach guitar and play with the school's Eclipse Orchestra, where he began to develop a style which mixed traditional Malian music with more modern rock sounds. There he met Mariam. "I had been teaching students to sing and dance," she explains, "and I was also beginning to sing in public with one of the school's bands."

A bond slowly developed between the two of them. "We had lived near each other for years, but it was the music that eventually brought us together," says Amadou. "We were friends, and then there was romance."

They later moved to the Ivory Coast to raise their three children, and a couple of cassette-only releases during the late 1980s helped to build the reputation throughout west Africa of "the blind couple from Mali". In 1994 they moved again, this time to Paris. After three-much praised albums (including Sou Ni Tile and Wati), it's now time for the rest of the Western world to fall into line.

The duo relish the new attention. These days their time is taken up with trips to the United States, an increasing amount of international live shows and probably more interviews than they've ever had to deal with before. But they're not complaining. After all, it has been a long time coming.

Amadou hopes that the interest won't stop at the new album. He points to their back-catalogue waiting to be rediscovered and feels it's due a new lease of life.

"I am never bored with our early music," he says. "Old tracks are sometimes rearranged with new sounds when we play live and can sound very fresh and now. I still enjoy playing the very first songs I wrote. They're my souvenirs of good times from an earlier part of my life."

Dimanche à Bamako is out now. Amadou & Mariam play Whelan's, Dublin on Monday