Mali

Mali's music sits in three main streams that have all reached global audiences. The Mande griot tradition, with kora and ngoni at its centre, was carried abroad by Salif Keita, Mory Kanté, and Toumani Diabaté. Wassoulou, a pentatonic hunter-music tradition centred on women, broke through with Oumou Sangaré in the late 1980s. Desert blues, the Sahel's guitar-based lineage descended from Songhai and Tuareg traditions, reached the world through Ali Farka Touré, Tinariwen, and Songhoy Blues.

In 2012, MUJAO and Ansar Dine took control of northern Mali, including Timbuktu, and outlawed music as un-Islamic. Musicians' guitars were destroyed, radio stations were silenced, and concerts banned. Around 500,000 people fled south. Many northern musicians, including Songhoy Blues and members of Tinariwen, regrouped in Bamako or in exile. The French and African intervention pushed back the jihadist forces, but instability in the north has kept many artists from returning home to record.

The kora, a 21 to 25 string lute-harp played by jeli families for centuries, is Mali's most internationally recognised instrument and the centre of Toumani Diabaté and Sidiki Diabaté's work. The ngoni, a four to seven string lute and ancestor of the banjo, is Bassekou Kouyaté's signature. The balafon, a wooden xylophone, anchors much of the griot ensemble sound. Wassoulou music is built around the kamalengoni, a hunter's harp invented in the late 1950s. Electric guitar entered the music in the 1970s and now defines the desert-blues lineage.

Oumou Sangaré is the queen of wassoulou and won the Grammy for Best World Music Album in 2011. Fatoumata Diawara has built an international career across wassoulou, jazz, and rock since the 2010s and was Grammy-nominated for her 2018 album Fenfo. Rokia Traoré won the 2009 Critics Award at France's Victoires de la Musique. Kandia Kouyaté is one of the most respected female griottes of her generation. Many of the founding griot lineages were and remain female-led.

Ali Farka Touré spent his career making the case that Mississippi blues was the descendant of West African music carried across the Atlantic by the slave trade, and his Songhai guitar work makes the case audibly. His 1994 album Talking Timbuktu with Ry Cooder won the Grammy for Best World Music Album and brought the comparison to a wide American audience. Vieux Farka Touré, Bassekou Kouyaté, and Tinariwen have continued this conversation, with Tinariwen's electric Tuareg sound regularly compared to John Lee Hooker and the early electric blues.