Timbuktu

During her first spell on World Circuit, Oumou Sangaré made some of the finest albums to come out of West Africa in the last 30 years. Yet she ultimately grew restless due to the long gaps between releases and secondly by her desire to fuse her traditional Wassoulou dance rhythms with other styles. It led to her leaving the label to record the more experimental Mogoya (2017), on which she mixed traditional instruments with synths and electronica. Timbuktu continues the journey, but happily finds her back on World Circuit.

Produced by the French duo of Pascal Danaë and Nicolas Quéré, the songs were mostly written when she found herself stranded by lockdown in the US and unable to return home to Mali. Fusing African tradition with blues, folk and rock, the result is Sangaré’s boldest and most ambitious album to date. The opener, ‘Wassulu Don’, rides a John Lee Hooker rhythm, the kamalengoni meshing thrillingly with its distant cousin, the dobro, and with Danaë’s stinging electric guitar lines. There’s melodic Afro-pop (‘Sira’) and gentle folk-rock (‘Degui N’Kelena’), but perhaps best of all is ‘Kanou’, a multi-stringed mini-symphony on which Mamadou Sidibe’s kamelengoni is joined by dobro, banjo and slide guitar. As for Sangaré’s voice, it just seems to grow ever richer with the passing of time.