Westway to the world
With a little help from friends including Damon Albarn and Angie Stone, Mali’s brightest star pushes forward.
Fatoumata Diawara
★★★★
London KO
WAGRAM. CD/DL/LP
“WHEN YOU know where your roots are, you know where you are,” Diawara told MOJO in 2018, in advance of her second album, Fenfo – her discography is extensive, but London KO is only the third album to feature her name front, centre and solo. “You can go to different countries, visit different cultures, but you have to know where your roots are.” Bamako may be a long way from a recording studio in the shadow of London’s Westway, then, but it’s never been more obvious that the Malian singer knows exactly where she is.
A brief recap: Diawara came to our attention as a stage-stealing backing singer/dancer with Oumou Sangaré but had a histor y in street theatre and film; her debut LP, 2011’s
Fatou, suggested a Laurel Canyon-style singersongwriter. After that, however, she built her multi-disciplinary contacts book working with a cast of A-listers. Cuban jazz with Roberto Fonseca; soundtracking a Google documentar y on the digitising of manuscripts in Timbuktu; the award-winning film Timbuktu itself; an African histor y play in Paris with music by Damon Albarn? She’s got the T-shirt.
And it’s that last connection that provides the gateway to London KO. Trading appearances with Albarn’s Africa Express and Gorillaz, Diawara recruited him to compose, play and co-produce six of the 14 tracks. He brings the London, she supplies the KO. Their opening salvo, Nsera, appeared online shortly before last year’s football World Cup in Qatar, its video interspersing joyful scenes of life in Africa with shots of a blood-soaked sphere.
But something notable about Albarn’s tracks is how hard they are to pick out from the others. Anyone thinking he is the Machiavellian genius munificently bestowing his magic would be advised to turn to Blues, a spiritual rumba graced by Fonseca on piano but powered along by Alune Wade’s bass and Yves William Ombe Monkama’s percussion. Or Sete, on which Diawara is given wings by the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Another former collaborator, French pop renaissance man -M-, adds guitar to a couple of tracks; Will Calhoun plays drums; and Angie Stone is on great form on Somaw.
If Diawara and Albarn had to be at the top of their game to thrive in this company, they save the best for the home stretch: Dambe (just voice and synths, a thumping digital bass) is the only arrangement that sounds like something Albarn had prepared earlier; Maya adds a string quartet and sends you hastily to the replay button. Each of the 14 tracks suggests something Diawara may want to explore on her next album. She won’t. Her head may be somewhere between W10 and Wassoulou right now, but she knows where her roots are.