Fatou

Just when you thought Mali couldn't possibly produce any more extraordinary new musical stars, here's another. Born in the Ivory Coast and raised in Bamako, but long resident in Paris, Fatoumata Diawara draws on the hunters’ rhythms of her ancestral Wassoulou tradition. There are shades of her mentor Oumou Sangaré, for whom she sang backing vocals, but she updates them in a guitar-toting, nouvelle-Africaine chanteuse kind of way, with even bigger shades of her close friend Rokia Traoré. Yet Diawara has a style and feel all her own. Throw in the fact that she is striking-looking, a successful actress who projects radiant charm through every pore, and you have a package which, on paper at least, can't fail to beat every world going. So does the music live up to the marketing potential? And then some.

If the woozy, late-night feel of ‘Kanou’, the opener, suggests things may be all too tastefully understated for their own good, the album quickly wakes up with the zingingly tuneful ‘Sowa’, threading effortlessly into the slippery, Congolese-guitar-led ‘Bakonoba’. Diawara's light and fetchingly husky voice feels at first pleasant rather than remarkable. Yet the sultry grace with which she stretches out over the Wassoulou-flavoured ‘Kele’ soon insinuates its way into your system. The album proceeds through 12, short strong songs, the less-is-more production enhancing the sparse, acoustic-guitar-driven arrangements with a subtle touch of Rhodes piano here, a plinking ngoni (lute) there. The only real question hanging over this delightful album is whether it's the first step in an illustrious career or simply a hugely accomplished one-off.