Live in Bamako

There's a certain emotional urgency that can only be delivered by a live album. Live in Bamako, Oumar Konaté's fourth international release and second live recording, does not disappoint. The album demonstrates an artist confident in his ability to move people with his music, whether rocking out in full accompaniment of the band or plucking nimbly on his acoustic guitar in the gorgeously delivered ‘Chancouchara’.

The album was recorded in 2017 at the Songhoy in Bamako, a club famous for the breadth of its live music offering and a regular haunt for the internationally acclaimed Konaté. The album joins a long line of brilliant releases that over the past two decades have engendered an ever-growing global audience for Malian music. Not that Live in Bamako is an entirely traditional Malian affair: it is peppered with takamba rhythms, as one might expect to hear from Konaté's contemporaries such as Vieux Farka Touré. But it also nods to a musical sensibility without borders; distinct reggae beats, as heard in ‘La Plus Belle’ are interspersed with shredding guitar riffs on the venomous and 1970s-inspired ‘Merde à la Paix’, for an effect that enhances rather than surrenders Konaté's roots.