Music Thursday: Malian/French Pop By Way of the UK

Assistant Editor Ryan Bradley’s weekly exploration of great global music, in collaboration with Nat Geo Music.

I wasn’t planning to dedicate two weeks in a row to music from Mali. But then I heard Amadou & Mariam’s new single, "Sabali," and…well…I changed my mind. So sorry, Iceland, on top of your economic demise, you will have to wait to be featured on this blog.

Amadou & Mariam is composed of a blind couple from Bamako (Mali’s capital) who are best known for their album Dimanche à Bamako, which was produced by Manu Chao, a Parisian polyglot whose music is beloved all over the world. Manu Chao did not produce "Sabali," which is off the couple’s upcoming record Welcome to Mali, released November 17. Damon Albarn (the guy behind Britpop heavyweights Blur, a high-concept hip-hop "band" with cartoons (Gorillaz), and an opera based on a sixteenth-century Chinese novel called Monkey: Journey to the West) produced "Sabali."

I’m pretty sure that Albarn is a genius, or at least he is very unafraid to push the boundaries of what constitutes popular music. For example: let’s take a band (Amadou & Mariam) known for as much for Amadou’s searing guitar as their soaring vocals, and let’s take out the guitar. Instead, let’s try to make something that long-haired greasy Frenchman can get down to. The kind of thing that Sebastian Tellier (the exact longhaired, greasy Frenchman I’m imagining) might produce. His song, "Divine," was France’s official entry into the Europop competition this year, which produced some serious French angst since Tellier is singing in English…but now I’ve gone off-course.

"Sabali" begins with Amadou crooning quietly over a sad, distant string section. Enter a pipe-organ, some electronic beeps and sputters, and then Mariam begins twittering like a melancholy nightingale. A beat, from a drum machine, comes in at about a minute and forty-five seconds. Cue an epic synthesizer line, something that might just have easily worked in the soundtrack of a Legend of Zelda video game. The song builds and builds until it can build no more. Then Mariam—I imagine her smiling, coyly—says "bye-bye." Then it ends.

Sabali means "sweetness" and some of the French phrases translate as "Darling, I’m speaking to you. Darling, the world is beautiful. Lots of love darling, big kisses." Not the most compelling, but the thing sounds like its title. (Listen to it here.)

There’s a lot to say about producer Alburn, who traveled to Mali earlier this decade to make a record with a straightforward title, Mali Music. He’s a true searcher, a musician who finds sounds and inspiration the world over. And it turns out that Albarn has spent a "good deal of time in Reykjavk" (according to his MySpace page) and is even a partial owner of a bar there. So, hey, I did get Iceland in after all.