Unquestionably the foremost purveyors of guitar based Malian pop, The Rail Band have had an enormous influence on the development of West African music since their inception in the early seventies. Though they benefited from government sponsorships, taking their name from the Malian National Railway Company that arranged their earliest performances, their improvisational aesthetic and inventive fusion of traditional Malian folk forms, Latin percussion, and western pop marked them as original and independent minded artists.