On April 29, 2022, Oumou Sangaré released her album Timbuktu (Oumsang/World Circuit/BMG). We met her at the beginning of February 2022 in Issy.
Oumou, its history by Francis Dordor
Since Moussolou, her first album released in 1989, the life of the Malian singer Oumou Sangare knew no respite. From this rich and hectic journey, we retain in particular some of the most decisive recordings of contemporary African music, all produced by the World Circuit label: Koh Sira in 1993, Worotan in 1996 and Seya nominated in the Best World Music Album category of the Grammy Awards in 2009. Numerous international tours and the consecration obtained on prestigious stages such as the Sydney Opera House, Queen Elizabeth Hall in London or the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, complete this roll of honor.
Timbuktu, first sound production label Oumsang constitutes the new act of this unparalleled musical epic with which World Circuit is once again associated. It consecrates this artist from the poor neighborhoods of Bamako who has become a world superstar, as well as a unanimously admired feminist icon. With a powerful aura comparable to that of Grace Jones, a transgressive black icon par excellence, Oumou has long since crossed the barriers separating musical genres and continents. Yesterday, invited by Alicia Keys for a television duo, she is now cited as an example by artists as considerable asAya Nakamurawho dedicated the song to him Oumou Sangare in 2017, Where Beyoncewho sampled one of his most famous creations, Diaraby Nene, for the title mood 4 Eva from the movie soundtrack The Lion King : The Gift in 2019.
His career led drum beating without the slightest break, however, experienced an interruption with the health crisis in 2020.
In March of that year (2020), following the FIWA (Festival International du Wassoulou), an event she created in 2016 to promote her region of origin in southern Mali, she traveled to the United States. Initially scheduled to last two weeks, his stay is extended due to confinement. First in New York, then in Baltimore where she quickly found her bearings. “Something immediately drew me to this city. I felt so good there that I wanted to buy a house.” Once settled there, she spends her days composing with an old acquaintance, Mamadou Sidibé, who was the first player of kamele n’goni (the traditional lute) to accompany her in her debut. Thanks to this forced seclusion, ten of the eleven songs constituting Timbuktu, a collection that forges intimate sound correspondences between traditional West African instruments and those linked to the history of the blues. Especially between the kamele n’goni and those distant heirs that are the dobro guitar and the slide guitar, played here by Pascal Danaeco-producer of the album with Nicolas Quéré. From this particular sequence of confinement, where time has so to speak stopped, where both the artist and the businesswoman found themselves in an unprecedented situation of isolation, far from the tumult and incessant solicitations, Oumou drew the best. “Since 1990, I had never had the opportunity to cut myself off from the world in this way to devote myself exclusively to music. From this point of view, the confinement was a chance for me because it allowed me to stay focused on the work of composition. I think that the music suffers from it, but also the texts which are the fruit of moments when I was able to withdraw into myself to meditate. His lyrics have never reached such poetic quality, such depth. Never have we found her so inspired to deliver her reflections on the indecipherable mysteries of existence, the perilous situation her country is going through or on the condition of African women, proof that even when she has become powerful, she has nothing reneged on his youthful commitments. Between the introspection of Degui N’Kelenathe amorous languor expressed in Kanucompassion in Demissimw, exasperation in Kele Magni Where pride in Wassulu Don, many states of mind nourish this disc. Finding in the sound design produced by Danaë and Quéré, which to the dynamics of the traditional rhythms of Wassoulou adds that specific to contemporary musical language, a convincing enhancement, Timbuktu thus imposes itself as the most ambitious and successful of an already distinguished discography.
If the title Timbuktu refers to the political news of Mali, a country threatened with disintegration and seeking in its history, of which this city in the north-east the most powerful symbol, reasons for hope, many songs refer to the singular experience of the singer. When in Sira (literally “the baobab” in Bambara), it evokes the offspring of erudite and well-to-do families who, despite this, laps into delinquency and spoil a promising future, it is almost unconsciously to underline by contrast the exemplary nature of its own trajectory … Born in Bamako on February 2, 1968, Oumou Sangaré is the youngest daughter of a family belonging to the Wassoulou Fulani ethnic group. His mother, Aminata Diakité, is a singer as was her own mother Noumouténé. Oumou knew very little about her father, Diari Sangaré, who left home when she was two years old. Abandoned, Aminata then becomes a trader to support her four children. Oumou comes to her aid by selling sachets of water in the street. Having taken the habit of following her mother in the “soumous” (nuptial or baptismal ceremonies) that she animates, she already grants herself a share of prestige by the clarity and the power of a voice which, springing from a child’s body, dazzles the audience. It does not take long to monopolize all the glory on the occasion of an inter-school competition where she wins her school in the district of Douadabougou by singing in front of 3,000 people gathered in the Omnisports Stadium of Bamako. Passed by the National Ensemble of Mali and the Djoliba group, Oumou already had a long professional career behind her when, at 18, she was about to record in Abidjan her first cassette produced by Abdoulaye Samassa (who had to offer her her own car to convince her to enter the studio). Reissued on CD and vinyl by World Circuit in 2016, the cassette titled Moussolou (“les femmes” in Bambara) sold more than 250,000 copies at the time, a record that remained unequaled in West Africa. much to the texts sung, sometimes roared, by this young lioness who, from a very young age, had to fight to survive. Standing up with ardor against the abuses of the patriarchal tradition, which authorizes polygamy, forced marriage and excision, Oumou becomes overnight the muse of a feminist cause which has no real foundation in this part of the world. Her career and her recordings thus remain branded like a red-hot iron by this double dimension: being a woman and have a social origin which has made it singularly sensitive to all forms of injustice. Timbuktu is no exception. Thereby Gniani Sara (literally “the reward of suffering”) refers to his lifelong fight for the status of women. “I dared to broach this subject before everyone else and even risked my life by doing so. she said today. My reward is to have succeeded in raising awareness. Especially among the younger generation. To see Aya Nakamura or Beyoncé take me as an example is worth all the prizes and all the distinctions in the world”.
Yet, becoming the greatest and most influential African singer alive was not enough for her. For thirty years, Oumou has also distinguished herself in the economic field and social action. At the head of several companies related to the hotel industry, agriculture or automobile trade through its Oum Sang brand, it currently employs nearly 200 full-time people. As for the Oumou Sangaré foundation, created ten years ago to help women and children in difficult situations, it completes, so to speak, an artistic work never far removed from humanist convictions. Raised to the rank of Commander of the National Order of Mali, made Knight of Arts and Letters of the French Republic, Oumou became Goodwill Ambassador of the CAM (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) in 2003, having received the UNESCO prize two years earlier.
But this success, Oumou must pay a high price. After having suffered some of the most cruel childhood wounds – abandonment, extreme poverty – she must now protect herself from the evils that notoriety brings on her, jealousy, slander, betrayal. As many attacks as it exposes in Sarama, and that she encourages herself to exceed in Dily Oumou. This results in the loneliness evoked in Degui N’Kelena, around which crystallizes the theme of separation and loss that she intends to confront in a Stoic way, welcoming each event with an active lucidity. A force that she draws entirely from the music itself, whose power refers to that of the hunters of Wassoulou who are its inventors. Indeed, the brotherhood of those called “Donsow” (“Donso” in the singular) is at the origin of the rhythms used by all modern singers, themselves baptized “kònò” (bird). An emblematic instrument of this repertoire, the donso-ngoni, modernized into kamel n’goni (the harp of young people) in the 1950s, remains the basis of all of Oumou’s compositions. Like a singing guide, that of Mamadou Sidibé structures all of the compositions of Timbuktuas it attracts by its pentatonic tonality the superb developments on the guitar of Pascal Danae. Using a Harmony Stratotone on Wassulu Don (literally “the culture of Wassoulou”), a dobro resonator on Degui N’Kelena and Saramaor the bottleneck technique on Sirathe musician seems each time to refer to the characteristic metallic sound of the kamel n’gnoni, thus forging an intoxicating complicity between musical genres and continents.
That overcoming suffering and facing all adversities runs through Oumou Sangaré’s entire repertoire is no coincidence given her past. This dominance is probably not unrelated either to the fact that during ceremonies specific to them, some hunters inflict abuse on themselves to better overcome them, go so far as to swallow burning embers or stab themselves with daggers while dancing, while the singers invoke supernatural forces. It is to this intractable trust that Wassulu Don. It is this culture with telluric foundations, with universal scope, that its most famous representative celebrates here, a singer who, like the greatest, Aretha Franklin or Nina Simone, sublimates pain and, more than ever, illuminates with her genius. own music, all music, and not just African. “The music is in me!”, Oumou proclaims. “Without it I am nothing, and nothing can take it away from me! In this disc I put my life, all my life, this life where I knew hunger, the humiliation of poverty, fear and from which I draw glory today.
(Rebroadcast April 17, 2022)
Tracks released from the album Timbuktu
– Wassulu Don see the clip
-Sira
– Degui N’Kelena
– Timbuktu