One of the most compelling aspects of Malian superstar Oumou Sangaré’s music has been the interplay of her hard-hitting subjects – forced marriage, war – and her sinuous, easygoing tunes. Her authoritative voice is often offset by an all-female chorus, supplying the solidarity her songs invoke. But Sangaré’s range encompasses tenderness and suffering too, rarely more so than on this hugely accessible record that reaches across borders in subtle but inveigling ways. West Africa birthed the lope of the blues – see Sarama, a song discouraging jealousy – but there are resonances here, too, of many different folk-fingerpicking techniques, and lush effects applied to the guitars, koras and kamele ngoni.
Timbuktu, Sangaré’s ninth outing, is named after the legendary city, one sacked by Islamist insurgents a decade ago, and stands in for the political problems ongoing across west Africa. And although this album was written at her new house in Baltimore, when Sangaré got stuck there during lockdown, many of these tracks look to her home region of Wassoulou, whose sung heritage and stringed instruments she has turned into an international world music phenomenon. This activist and businesswoman flexes hard for her community’s progress on Wassulu Don, but on Demissimw, a lonesome ballad about children affected by war, her sorrow is front and centre.
