Amadou & Mariam

Mali musical couple Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia met in Bamako's Institute for the Young Blind in 1975, a time when the sightless were relegated to society's margins. Bagayoko was a prodigal guitarist who would soon play with the renowned Les Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako, while Doumbia had been performing with other blind students in the band Eclipse. Together, they released their electrified traditional West African sounds on a series of cassettes recorded in Mali and the Ivory Coast during the ’80s and '90s, before moving to Paris in 1996. Their 1999 album, Sou ni iilé, contained the stirring French radio hit "Je pense à toi," while global acclaim arrived in 2004 with the release of Dimanche à Bamako, a beautifully cohesive Euro-African fantasia produced by Manu Chao. In addition to releasing several more albums, including 2017's La Confusion, Amadou & Mariam joined Damon Albarn's "Africa Express" project at Glastonbury in 2007. Starting in 2011, they performed a series of concerts in complete darkness, as a sensory experiment and sonic glimpse into their musical world.