Basically, I love how these two musicians from Mali looked when I first heard about them... and actually I didn’t hear about them, I commissioned a photo shoot and saw the photographs when they came in. I nearly fell over. They looked like something I would like to erroneously call afro-kitsch. First thing I said is, “They look like a couple of dictators!”... then I found out they wore those pimped out shades because they were blind. I didn’t flinch, I insisted with the dictator angle. You see, the photos were simply glorious! The couple was photographed in a colonial style wooden panelled room, with bronze light fittings and a huge wooden conference table. Our illustrious singing pair wore their national dress, Malian robes and they were just killer. The metal, almost bronze in colour, shades hauled straight from the 70’s just completed the look. Smiles from ear to ear were the coupé de grace to the assault on my unprepared senses. Much like their music when I finally got to hear it, I googled and was rewarded with their own website www.amadou-mariam.com To this day I have never actually managed to find that album anywhere... sold out.
Today I caught a glimpse of their new album artwork, That golden guitar being wielded by Amadou and all that bling on Mariam... and they still look killer, all that style they carry off with a discreet and effortless charm, like their thousand year old smiles. What I judged to be the funkiest, most gifted vocalists I have never fully heard, drive me insane with the beauty of their album covers and concepts, and the two or three tracks I have heard online.
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