Mali music reviews

Sali Sidibe is a singer from the Wassalou region of Mali. (The region's most famous star is the incomparable Oumou Sangare.) Sali is a good singer, if not as great as Oumou, with a strong smoky contralto. On this album she is backed up by a typical Wassalou band consisting of one-string fiddle, kamel ngoni (hunter's lute), balafon, what sounds like a Western-style drum-set as well as djembes and calabash, and of course the essential female back-up singers. Occasionally we hear the sweet tones of the Peul flute, and on one track a male voice guest-stars, singing in a delightfully harsh desert style reminiscent of Mamar Kassey's vocalist Yacouba Moumouni.
The songs are solid in their bluesy groove, the one-string fiddle singing a harsh counterpoint to Sali's voice (it is truly amazing that so many sounds come out of one string, I am dissappointed that Shanachie does not tell us who the band consists of), the balafon and kamelngoni providing driving ostinatos.
This music is the boogie of Africa, a connection between the Niger river and the Mississippi, a link from the parched cow pastures of the Sahel to the small holdings of the Mississippi Hill Country. Sali could be Jessie Mae Hemphill's long-lost cousin (the flute player representing the great fife players like Otha Turner and Sid Hemphill), the unknown fiddle player a musical kin to every harmonica player from Sonny Terry to Little Walter.