Latest news with #Afro-rock
BBC News
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Amadou Bagayoko - thousands attend funeral of Malian musician
Thousands of people gathered in Mali on Sunday for the funeral of musician Amadou Bagayoko, of the world-renowned duo Amadou & relatives, fans and fellow artists flocked to the ceremony in the capital city of Bamako - including the musician Salif Keita and former prime minister Moussa of the most successful African musical act of the 2000s, husband and wife duo Amadou & Mariam achieved global fame by combining West African influences with rhythm and breakthrough album, 2004's Dimanche à Bamako, sold half a million copies worldwide and led to collaborations with Blur's Damon Albarn, as well as appearances at the Glastonbury and Coachella festivals. Mali's culture minister, Mamou Daffé, said on state TV that Bagayoko had died on Friday in the city of Bamako, aged 70. The musician's family confirmed the news, adding that he "had been ill for a while".No further information was given on the cause of death, but his widow, Mariam Doumbia, described her husband's last moments."I took his hand and tried to make some movements with it, but it didn't move," she said."I said: 'Amadou, don't do this, speak to Mariam... but he didn't speak any more."The musician was taken to hospital, where he subsequently died."I thought that, if Amadou went just like that, then me, I'm alone," Doumbia added. "I was alone and I will remain alone in life." Franco-Spanish star Manu Chao, who produced Dimanche à Bamako, led tributes to Bagayoko in a post on Instagram, saying: "We will always be together... Wherever you go."Mariam, Sam, the whole family, your pain is my pain. I love you," he Malian singer Sidiki Diabate lamented "another immense loss for Malian music".Youssou N'Dour said he considered Amadou & Mariam to be "the ambassadors of African music almost everywhere in the world".Speaking to France's TV5 Monde, he said Bagayoko had pursued his career with "a dignity and a way of life that inspired us all... and encouraged us in what we were doing". Inventor of 'Afro-rock' Born in Bamako in 1954, Bagayoko went blind when he was 15 because of a congenital cataract. He subsequently enrolled at Mali's Institute for the Young Blind, where he met his future wife, Mariam, who had lost her vision at the age of five after contracting measles. They formed a band called Mali's Blind Couple in 1980, and moved to the neighbouring Ivory Coast in 1986, having realised that Mali's under-developed music industry would be a hindrance to their they recorded a series of cassettes, pairing Doumbia's soulful voice with Bagayoko's powerful guitar style, inspired by British acts like Led Zeppelin and Pink aim, Bagayoko said, was to "find a link between them and our Bambara culture". He christened the sound "Afro-rock". Their lives were changed when Manu Chao heard one of their songs on the radio and offered to produce their next ended up co-writing and singing on the record, adding eccentric rhythmical touches to their brand of desert result was Dimanche à Bamako, which won both the Victoire de la Musique - France's equivalent to a Grammy Award - and the BBC Radio World Music Award in follow-up, 2008's Welcome to Mali, was nominated for best contemporary world music album at the record was produced by Damon Albarn, who had invited the duo to take part in his Africa Express project in 2007, and invited them to tour with Blur during their 2009 reunion Shears of Scissor Sisters was also a fan, and took Amadou & Mariam on the road with his band in 2012. "What they do hearkens back to classic rock and real musicianship," he told The Times as the tour kicked off. "Now with all bands, when you're playing live, everybody's got backing tracks going on. Everyone's working with a net. They are a proper old-school rock band." In 2009, they played in Oslo as Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize; and in 2011 staged a series of concerts in the dark, to show audiences how they experienced music. A year later, they decided to record two versions of their sixth album Folila - one in New York and one with traditional musicians in Bamako. The idea was to release each separately but, in the end, the duo decided to combine the recordings, mixing different takes of the same song together in a third studio in contributions from Santigold, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TV On The Radio, it earned the group a second Grammy nomination in 2012.2017's La Confusion, addressed the political turmoil in their homeland, where Islamic extremists had imposed Shariah law and banished like Bofou Safou offered messages of strength, resistance and optimism amidst the turmoil. Bagayoko said he hoped the music was universal"We started to work on the things that were happening in our homeland, but then realised that they could be applied to a lot of other countries in the world," he told OkayAfrica. "There is a confusion all over the world, and it's time to communicate, to talk and share ideas for a better future and understanding."The duo continued to record and tour until last year. Bagayoko's final performance came at the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Paralympic of Sunday, the duo's website still listed dates for a European tour in May and is survived by his wife and a son, Sam, also a "will be buried in family intimacy in the courtyard of his home", his spokesman Djiby Sacko told the AFP news agency.
New York Times
06-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Amadou Bagayoko, Half of Malian Duo Who Went Global, Dies at 70
Amadou Bagayoko, a Malian guitarist and composer who with his wife, the singer Mariam Doumbia, formed Amadou & Mariam, inventing a broadly accessible sound that made fans of people worldwide who otherwise knew little about music from Africa, died on Friday in Bamako, Mali's capital. He was 70. His death was announced by the Malian government, which did not provide a cause. He and Ms. Doumbia lived in Bamako. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Amadou & Mariam was regularly described as the new century's most successful African musical act. Mr. Bagayoko, who grew up listening to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, called their sound 'Afro-rock,' and the group regularly combined his winding guitar solos with, for example, the pounding of a West African djembe drum. Yet the group's music also consistently evolved. Their breakout hit, the 2005 album 'Dimanche à Bamako,' had chatty spoken asides, sirens, the hubbub of crowds — city sounds turned into melodies. Their 2008 album 'Welcome to Mali,' conversely, embraced an electronic style of funk, opening with a song, 'Sabali,' featuring Damon Albarn of the arty hip-hop group Gorillaz. What was consistent was a sweet, graceful sound that still had the power to build to crescendos, with Ms. Doumbia's alto achieving clear, pleasant resonance over a rich orchestration. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
26-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Jamie Muir obituary
None of the many former art students who enlivened the British rock scene in the 1960s and 70s brought with them a greater sense of anarchic spectacle than the percussionist Jamie Muir, whose stage equipment included not just drums and cymbals but steel chains, blood capsules, a bowl of pistachio shells and a bird whistle. Muir, who has died aged 79, was introduced to the public in late 1972 as a member of King Crimson. This was the third lineup convened by the group's leader, the guitarist Robert Fripp, under a name that had first made headlines in 1969 with an appearance at the Rolling Stones' free concert in Hyde Park, followed by the release of an incendiary and globally successful debut album. Fripp's new assemblage included the singer and bassist John Wetton, the young violinist David Cross, and a drummer, Bill Bruford, whom he had enticed away from Yes, another successful progressive rock group. In the six months Muir stayed with them, his presence changed the group's philosophy completely, loosening the notoriously strict guidelines imposed by Fripp and exploring the boundaries of improvisation. This was a shock not just for their audiences but for the musicians, too. Into Fripp's world of complex interlocking riffs in unorthodox time-signatures came a man in a bearskin bolero, orange loon pants, a waxed moustache, an infectious grin and an instinct for disruption, whose idea of a solo might involve emptying a sack of leaves over his kit. For Bruford, a schooled musician for whom the experience might easily have been discomfiting, Muir's presence – almost that of a performance artist – represented a liberation. 'He had a volcanic effect on me,' he remembered. But then, suddenly, on the eve of a tour of the UK, Europe and the US, he was gone. The group's management issued a statement claiming that his absence was caused by an injury suffered on stage. In fact Muir had returned to Scotland to spend several years as a Buddhist monk, the indulgences of his former life replaced by retreat and meditation. Later he returned to painting, to which he devoted the decades before his death. Born in Edinburgh, one of the four children of a solicitor, William Gray Muir, and his wife Elizabeth (nee Montgomery), he attended Gordonstoun school in Moray, where he encountered a younger pupil who would become King Charles III. That was followed by Edinburgh College of Art, where he studied painting while playing the trombone in jazz bands. In 1967, having dropped out of college and switched to drums, he joined a free-jazz group called the Assassination Weapon, who played in a pub with their own light show until attracting the attention of the police and losing the gig 'for inducing a drug-like atmosphere'. Moving to London, he took a job as a department store assistant while playing with various bands, including the poet/singer Pete Brown's Battered Ornaments, the jazz-rock band Sunship and the Afro-rock band Assegai. He also founded a short-lived free-improvisation group called Heavy African Envelope, two of whose members, the singer Christine Jeffrey and the electronicist Hugh Davies, would also join him, along with the saxophonist Evan Parker and the guitarist Derek Bailey, in the Music Improvisation Company, which made an album for the ECM label in 1970. That year he joined the saxophonist Don Weller in a four-piece rock band called Boris, whose appearance at the Marquee in London received an enthusiastic recommendation in Melody Maker. Intrigued by that review, and by a subsequent interview Muir gave to the paper, Fripp contacted him. After the two had played together informally, the drummer became a most unlikely recruit to the guitarist's new lineup. Their first full appearance was on a popular weekly German TV show called Beat Club Bremen, followed by a 27-date tour of the UK, where audiences were disconcerted to find that the only tune they recognised was 21st Century Schizoid Man, a favourite from the first album, itself withheld until the encores. When the band made a studio album, Larks' Tongues in Aspic, its title was taken from the phrase Muir produced in response to a request to describe the kind of music they were now playing. 'King Crimson was ideal for me because it was a rock band with more than three brain cells,' Muir said later. 'I felt completely at home.' Reviewers and audiences, once they had recovered from the initial shock, were largely enthusiastic. Nevertheless, after a gig at the Marquee his colleagues learned of his decision to leave not just the band but the world of music with immediate effect. He had been persuaded to lead a different life by reading Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. 'I didn't feel happy about letting people down,' he said, 'but this was something I had to do or else it would have been a source of deep regret for the rest of my life.' His next few years were spent at the Samye Ling monastery near Eskdalemuir in Dumfries and Galloway. When Muir re-emerged in the early 80s there were occasional engagements with music, including a duo album, Dart Drug (1981), with Bailey, and the soundtrack to a film called Ghost Dance (1983). But painting became the priority, first in Islington, north London, and then at a permanent home near Penzance in Cornwall, although exhibiting his work held little interest for him. Parker remembers Muir asking him to sit for his portrait, and taking a long time over doing so, using a pencil to produce a work in a very detailed and painstaking hyper-realist style. When it was finished, Muir laid it on his kitchen floor over a sprinkling of leaves and rubbed the pencil across the paper to produce a frottage effect before picking it up, showing it to Parker, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it into a waste bin. He is survived by his brother, George, and a sister, Mary. Another brother, Andrew, predeceased him. Jamie (William James Graham) Muir, percussionist and painter, born 4 July 1945; died 17 February 2025
