Genre: Traditional
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Description: Oumou Sangare is Mali's great diva, a champion of women's rights, and one of the world's most astounding female vocalists. The best-known performer of the Malian popular music style of Wassoulou, "Sangare Kono" (Sangare the Songbird) fronts an 11-piece band that draws on the sacred hunting-music traditions of southern Mali. With politically charged lyrics supported by strong, hypnotic grooves, Oumou Sangare is an icon in Mali and around the world
The Wassoulou region of southern Mali has earned a reputation for bluesy rhythms and melodies, and stunning, female vocalists. With sculpted braids, flowing robes and an angel's voice, Oumou Sangaré leads the Wassoulou invasion now competing with Mali's once-dominant Manding griot (jeli) pop music. "People like rhythms that make them move," says Sangaré. "When you hear Wassoulou music, you get up and dance." Sangaré's mother and grandmother sang, and they encouraged her to do so from the age of five. In 1986, the 18-year-old Sangaré toured in the French Caribbean and Europe with a 27-piece folkloric troupe. At 21, she ignited the Wassoulou explosion with her smash debut cassette Moussoulou ("Women"), which quickly sold 200,000 legal copies, and many more in the pirate cassette trade. Youth lies at the core of Wassoulou music. Its central instrument, the kamele ngoni ("young person's harp") has six strings, a long neck and a calabash resonator. Its larger cousin, the buzzing, boomy doso ngoni ("hunter's harp") accompanies the sacred songs hunters use to communicate with their guiding spirits. A rebel for women's causes, Sangaré challenges long-standing practices of arranged marriages and polygamy. Musically, though, she sticks to her roots, rejecting electronic instruments and limiting her sound to kamele ngoni, djembe drum, violin, flute, guitar, bass, the scraped, metallic karagnan and her own heart-tugging