Oumou Sangaré

Oumou Sangaré (born February 25, 1968, Bamako, Mali) is a Malian singer and songwriter known for championing women’s rights through wassoulou, a style of popular music derived from vocal and instrumental traditions of rural southern Mali.

The earliest influence on Sangaré’s musical development was her mother, a migrant to Bamako from Mali’s Wassoulou region, where women had long figured prominently in traditional-music performance. As a skilled singer, Sangaré’s mother was often hired to perform at wedding and baptism celebrations in the city. Sangaré frequently accompanied her mother to these events, and it was not long before she began to sing at them herself. By the time she was in her early teens, Sangaré was already a locally recognized artist.

At age 16 Sangaré joined the band Djoliba Percussions and briefly toured Europe with the group as its lead vocalist. Following the tour she set about writing music for her first album. She worked within the framework of wassoulou music, the popular style that had been created and cultivated by the Wassoulou migrant community in Bamako. Central to the wassoulou sound were the strains of the kamele ngoni, a six-string harp ultimately associated with rural Wassoulou tradition. Aside from the harp, Sangaré used a violin to replace—or suggest—the traditional Wassoulou bowed lute, a scraper to add rhythmic drive, and the electric guitar and bass to provide melodic and harmonic support. Sangaré also recruited a chorus of female singers to articulate her powerful solo singing in a call-and-response fashion typical of many music traditions of western Africa.

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In 1990 Sangaré finally released her debut recording, Moussoulou (“Women”), and it received an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response. Audiences were enchanted not only with her agile vocals but also with her lyrics, which critically addressed taboo topics such as polygamy, arranged marriage, and the hardship of women in western African society. When the album sold more than 250,000 copies locally, it was quickly picked up for international distribution.

With the album Ko Sira (1993), Sangaré stretched the boundaries of wassoulou music by drawing more heavily from internationally popular styles—such as rock, funk, and soul—while maintaining a distinctly African sound. Several songs on Worotan (1996), for instance, featured soul-influenced wind arrangements led by American saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis. Both albums electrified African dance floors and, like their predecessor Moussoulou, spoke to pressing social issues, particularly those affecting women.

The pace of Sangaré’s recording slowed after the mid-1990s. Although the retrospective compilation Oumou appeared in 2004, it was not until 2009 that she released an album of new material, Seya (“Joy”). The following year she was one of the artists featured on a remake of the John Lennon song “Imagine,” from the album The Imagine Project by Herbie Hancock. The single earned a Grammy Award for best pop collaboration with vocals. Sangaré later released the albums Mogoya (2017) and Acoustic (2020).

During her hiatuses from recording, Sangaré was by no means inactive. Rather, in addition to maintaining a regular performance schedule in Mali, she established a hotel and concert space in Bamako, set up an automobile-import business, started a farm, and worked for various humanitarian agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, for which she served as an official ambassador.

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