Cheick-Tidiane Seck, keyboardist, composer, and performer of popular and traditional Malian music. He has been playing with Mory Kante and Salif Keita, as well as with the jazz pianist Hank Jones.
Khaïra Arby (sometimes spelled Haira) "The Nightingale of the North" is a singer from Mali. She is from the desert- from Agouni, north of Timbuktu, Mali, and cousin to Ali Farka Touré. She sings in Sonrai, Arabic, Tamashek, accompanied by instruments and rhythms just as varied, with electric guitar and trickling beats, calabash, traditional violin and guitar, and drumming that creates that abrupt squared sound of the music from that part of Mali.
This is an incorrect tag for Toumani Diabaté. If this non-artist appears in your charts, do last.fm and yourself a favor. Fix your artist tags.
Taj Mahal describes him as a genius, a living proof that the blues comes from the region of Segu. Bassekou Kouyate is one of Mali's best-known Ngoni players. He has collaborated with many important traditional musicians of his country as well as international such as Carlos Santana, U2 among many many others. Most recently he is featured on Ali Farkas posthumous album 'Savane' and toured with him leaving a lasting impression on the audience as the bands solo ngoni player.
Tamikrest are a group of young Touareg musicians from the far north of Mali.
Salif Keita (born 25 August 1949) is an internationally recognized Afro-Pop singer and song writer from Mali. He is unique not only because of his reputation as the Golden Voice of Africa, but because he is an albino and a direct descendant of the founder of the Mali Empire, Sundiata Keita. Keita was born on August 25, 1949 in the city of Djoliba. He was outcast by his family and ostracized by the community because he was an albino, a sign of bad luck in Mandinka culture. He left Djoliba for Bamako in 1967, where he joined the government sponsored Super Rail Band de Bamako.
Tinariwen (Tamasheq for "empty places") is a musical band formed in 1982 in Moammar al-Qadhafi's camps of Tuareg rebels. They play French- and Tamasheq-lyrics songs in the Tishoumaren ("music of the unemployed") style, mostly concerning independence for their people from the government of Mali. Having recorded many albums available on cassette over their eighteen years, in December 2000 the group recorded their first album for the CD format, The Radio Tisdas Sessions, their first recording available outside Africa.
Ali Ibrahim “Farka” Touré (October 31, 1939 – March 7, 2006) was a Malian singer and guitarist, and one of the African continent’s most internationally renowned musicians. His music is widely regarded as representing a point of intersection of traditional Malian music and its North American cousin, the blues. The belief that the latter is historically derived from the former is reflected in Martin Scorsese’s often quoted characterization of Touré’s tradition as constituting "the DNA of the blues". Touré was ranked number 76 on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”.
