Oumou Sangare - Kamelemba (Wassoulou/Experimental) /Saa Magni
Oumou Sangare "Songbird of Wassoulou" is my first introduction to the beautiful world of Malian Music. This track is from her latest album, a "crossover" effort which still rings authentic.
I couldn't get this out of my head for a couple days. "Wassoulou" is a genre of West African popular music named for the Wassoulou cultural area, a region south of the Niger River. Vocals feature a call and response structure and the style is dominated by Women - female "griots" really- singing about childbirth, fertility, and polygamy. Traditional instruments like the soku (traditional fiddle), the djembe drum, n'goni (six stringed Kora which sounds a lot like a banjo - you can hear it at the start of Kamelemba), Karinyan ( metal tube used for percussion) and the bolon (a four-stringed harp) define the genre, musically.
Oumou sings in one of the dialects of the Bambara language. In Kamelemba, she warns women to be wary of vain men.
And this is Oumou's poignant lament "Saa Magni" from "Ko Sira".
She tackles death yet it's also gorgeous and strangely "light" (despite the heavy subject matter)
If you're intrigued, I strongly recommend getting her first release "Moussolou".
