Amadou Bagayoko, the award-winning Malian singer and guitarist in the husband-and-wife duo Amadou & Mariam, has died, according to the Associated Press. In a local televised broadcast, Mali’s Minister of Culture Mamou Daffé revealed that Bagayoko died on Friday (April 4) in his hometown of Bamako. He was 70.
Alongside his wife Mariam Doumbia, Bagayoko found international success creating music as Amadou & Mariam. The two combined traditional African instruments with more Western-inspired rock, pop, and blues in the hopes of making Malian music universal. On some records, that meant invoking their regional sounds through creative methods, like playing electric guitar as if it were the ngoni, a West African stringed instrument. Over the course of their multiple decades-long career, they more than succeeded at their goal, performing around the world with artists like Stevie Wonder and U2, recording lauded collaborations with Santigold and TV on the Radio, and earning high-profile awards in the music industry.
Born in October 1954, Bagayoko lost his vision due to a congenital cataract at age 15 and began studying at Mali’s Institute for the Young Blind. It was there that he met Doumbia, who went blind at age five, and they bonded over their shared love of music while performing at the institute’s Eclipse Orchestra. After getting married in 1980, the two formally kicked off their band Mali’s Blind Couple, recording blues songs in the regional Mali style. They relocated to Côte d’Ivoire a few years later and switched to more lo-fi, stripped-back arrangements on guitar and vocals under the moniker Amadou & Mariam, recording songs on cassette tapes in the ’80s and ’90s. It was there that they crossed paths with Stevie Wonder, who invited them to start playing festivals outside of Africa.
In 1996, Amadou & Mariam moved to Paris and signed to the record label Emarcy. Sou Ni Tile, their first studio album recorded outside of Africa and their debut on the label, came out in 1998 and found considerable success on Parisian radio with the single “Je Pense à Toi.” The duo rolled out three more albums before catching the attention of Latin star Manu Chao, who offered to produce their 2004 record Dimanche à Bamako, their breakout LP and highest-charting album in numerous countries. Amadou & Mariam followed it up with three more full-length records: 2008’s Welcome to Mali, 2012’s Folila, and 2017’s La Confusion.
As their music crossed over to other countries, so did their touring routes. Amadou & Mariam booked sets at U.S. festivals like Coachella and Lollapalooza, landed opening slots for historic gigs like Blur’s massive 2009 reunion shows in Hyde Park, and got invites to perform on TV shows like Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.
