Farewell Amadou Bagayoko. Following an illness, the guitarist and singer of the renowned Malian music duo Amadou & Mariam has died at the age of 70.
Mali’s Minister of Culture Mamou Daffé has paid tribute to the blind musician in a televised broadcast on state TV. He said that Bagayoko died Friday 4th April 2025 in the city of Bamako. No further details were given.
Born in Bamako in 1954, Amadou Bagayoko lost his sight when he was 16 years old due to a congenital cataract. He studied music at Mali’s Institut des Jeunes Aveugles de Bamako (Institute for the Young Blind in Bamako) where he met his wife, Mariam Doumbia, who had gone blind aged 6 years old.
Through their shared interest in music, the couple formed a group, blending traditional Malian music with rock guitars and western blues. They quickly rose to fame in Mali, and later gained recognition across West Africa, especially after relocating to Côte d’Ivoire for a few years.
Amadou & Mariam achieved international acclaim in 2004 with the hit ‘Dimanche à Bamako’, from the album of the same name, produced by French musician Manu Chao. This tremendous success earned them a Victoire de la Musique award the following year in France, in the World Music category.
Amadou and Mariam went on to become one of Africa’s bestselling duos, playing alongside the likes of Damon Albarn, and their childhood idol, the Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour.
The duo played at many major festivals including Glastonbury, sharing bills with artists such as Coldplay, U2, and Stevie Wonder, and played for the former US president Barack Obama at the concert marking his Nobel Peace prize award.
I was fortunate to catch Amadou & Mariam at two festivals myself – All Tomorrow’s Parties in Minehead and Lunar in Tanworth-in-Arden, in 2010 and 2018 respectively. As great as those two festival appearances were, they were bisected by what was the most memorable of occasions on which I saw the duo in concert. This took place at the New Century Hall in Manchester in July 2011.
This concert, which was part of that year’s Manchester International Festival, was promoted as a “sensory experiment.” It was conducted in total darkness with the sounds and smells of their home country piped through the venue’s speakers and grills and was geared towards providing the audience with an opportunity to experience the event from the same perspective as its creators.
Whilst occasionally unsettling and most certainly inhibiting – the audience were seated and therefore unable to express themselves as they might otherwise do at a more conventional Amadou and Mariam show – the experiment certainly worked in terms of intensifying the individual sensory experience as well as further developing your disability awareness.
Photos of Amadou & Miriam taken at Lunar Festival, 2018: Simon Godley
