Womad

Mamani Keita and Nicolas Repac

Heavenly marriage between Africa and Europe

"When I was a kid, I got a few beatings from my mother because she really didn't want me to sing. I wasn't allowed to sing but I believe that everyone ends up following their destiny and that's that." Born into a bloodline of nobility (the Keitas are descended from the Malian Empire's founder, Sundiata Keita), music was seen as too low-rent a vocation for Mamani Keita. It's certainly to our advantage that she was so headstrong in pursuing her calling. Probably best known for Electro Bamako, Mamani's 2003 album with Frenchman Marc Minelli which, as its title suggests, brilliantly fused her beguiling vocals with Minelli's adeptness with technology. Five years later, her latest project finds her in the company of another Parisian, this time the multi-instrumentalist Nicolas Repac. And while the electronics have largely been dispensed of, it's another thoroughly marriage of traditions. The fruits of their labours, heard on the tremendous record Yelema, is rich and velvety, Mamani's distinctively breathy voice a wonderful counterpoint to Nicolas' spidery guitar. Europe and West Africa once again find that musically they make extraordinarily compatible bedfellows. These continents aren't colliding.

Biog by Nige Tassell