The Magic Couple

Amadou and Mariam's The Magic Couple collects the more memorable moments and music of this pivotal period for the magic couple. It is the best of three unmissable albums of Amadou and Mariam.

"Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia aren't the first husband and wife team to break out of Mali...but they are the first Malian artists so successfully to fuse local roots music with a European pop sensibility. They were already looking beyond their birth culture in 1997, as four tracks from Sou Ni Tile reveal. 'Je Pense A Toi' (check the YouTube clip below) foregrounds the Middle Eastern-styled violin of Sameh Catalan, 'Combattants' and 'A Chacun Son Probleme' feature harmonica player Loic Landois, and 'C'est La Vie' includes the exuberant, Latin American-flavored trumpet of Barbaro Teunter. Weave into the mix Amadou's spangly electric guitar and the supple rhythm team of bassist Shihab M'Ghezzi Bekhouche and drummer Stephane San Juan, and the template for Dimanche a Bamako is already being drawn...Amadou and Mariam absorb and successfully recalibrate non-Malian styles. A great trawl through the couple's back catalogue." - All About Jazz