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HeyOn April 4, Amadou Bagayoko died suddenly at the age of 70 in Bamako, Mali. The country’s Ministry of Culture announced the news. Thousands attended the funeral, including former collaborators Manu Chao, Youssou N’Dour, Malian-French rapper Mokobi, and Congolese star Faly Ipupa, all paying tribute to a man they knew as an uncle, blues guitar giant, leader, and friend.
“I miss him so much,” says Meriem Doumbia, his wife and musical partner of 44 years in the duo Amadou & Meriem. “We did everything together. We traveled together. We composed together. The sound of his guitar is always between my ears. Especially at night, it comes to my mind. Even now, I just hear it.”
Dressed in a signature vibe of white lace, gold jewelry and black shades, Doumbia is on a video call to discuss the duo’s upcoming ninth album in French, L’amour à la folie. Next to her is her son Samo. This is the first album to be released since Bagayoko’s death.
The day after Bagayoko’s death, Doumbia was interviewed by French television. Wearing a long veil of white flowers, she recounted how, although he had been ill for a while, he suddenly took a turn for the worse. “I took his hand, and I put my hand on his hand, on his body, and he was not talking, and I said: ‘Oh, Amadou, Amadou, don’t do this, talk to Maryam.’ Amado, Amado. Amadou, Amadou.” But by the time they reached the hospital, he was gone. “That’s how it happened,” she said, clapping her hands once. “He’s gone, just like that.”
To watch her grief on screen afterward is to feel betrayed. How dare anyone not look away out of respect, turn off the camera, and leave it alone? Then again, ever since they first took the stage together in the 1980s, Amadou and Meryem have expressed their love as something they wanted to share with the world. Also in their grief, Doumbia and Samo welcomed fans everywhere. “I want people to celebrate with me all the time,” Doumbia says. “Especially right now, it makes me happy. It encourages me. It helps me.” At the same time, music “brings joy” and “solves many problems.”
L’amour à la folie was completed before Bagayoko’s death, and the album’s lyrics have an Emily Dickinson quality: taut and concise. The album includes new songs and others that were written long ago but never sung, and begins with “Welcome Home,” in which the couple sings in French: “From the moment you arrived, my love / You managed to change my thoughts every day.”
When asked what she remembers of their first meeting, Doumbia simply said: “He found me.” Both went blind as children, and now, in the mid-1970s, Bagayoko is a celebrated guitarist in his twenties with the band Les Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako, after his first international tour. Doumbia was four years younger than him, and was responsible for teaching song and choreography to young children at her school, the Mali Institute for Blind Youth. He enrolled in a Braille study, heard her sing, and that was it. “When Amadou arrived, we held hands,” she says, “and that’s how we stayed.”
The album’s title track comes in at No. 5, with a big band intro, extolling the breadth of loving with all your heart (“To love without limits, that’s what it’s like to love madly”). Tanu, meanwhile, is an older song. The couple wrote it while they were at the institute, in the Bambara language, “as a thank you to the people who helped us,” Doumbia says.
“It was difficult at first,” she says. “There were no recording studios in Mali. So we went to Côte d’Ivoire, which at that time was a crossroads: everyone went there to record.” They played gig after gig, meeting producer Aliu Maikano – “may his soul rest in peace, he also passed away about a month ago” – who recorded with them. “It really worked out. Everyone bought our cassettes – and they were selling like hot bread. We decided to come to France.”
In his 2010 autobiography, Far From Daylight, Bagayoko recounts what happened next. France was a huge – and very cold – shock. The duo went from being national heroes to complete unknowns. But, he writes, “Maryam and I redoubled our efforts.” They focused on getting the audience to sing along with them in French and Bambara. “It worked,” he writes. “Hope is back.” When they returned to Mali, they went on tour, and they caused a riot, and the people were very excited. Doumbia recalled what her mother had told her, writing that life was “a pendulum that oscillates between happiness and misery, joy and sadness.”
“The love that unites us, Amadou and I, we want to share with everyone,” Doumbia says, with a poignant mix of tenses. “Because we loved each other. We listened to each other. We talked to each other.”
“For example,she says, which can be translated two ways, both of which seem appropriate: “We heard each other” and “We agreed.”
She started writing a new song, saying: “Hail to Amadou. It started, but it didn’t end.” I say that must take enormous courage. “Yes, it’s not easy,” she replied, a softness creeping into her tone, and she immediately faced her. “But I’m a brave woman. A fighter.”
In what turned out to be a fortuitous move, Samo recently started playing with his parents. He didn’t master the guitar until he was in his twenties, and describes playing his father’s music now as “an honor and a joy.”
On stage, Doumbia says, she feels Bagayoko’s absence keenly. “He would always stop there, to my left, with his guitar,” she says. Watch a documentation of them at a concert, over dinner, or waiting in an airport lounge with their equipment at their feet, and you see her briefly resting her head or hand on his shoulder. You also light up when you start singing. His solidity—that unwavering calm—anchored their voice as much as it did hers.
“I will continue to make music,” she says. “I ask everyone to continue to show up, to continue to listen.” She then gets up, puts on a black fur coat, and leans into the camera. “See you next time,” she says in English, smiling.
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