Track Listing

1. Sisi
2. Baro
3. Tounga
4. Nogo
5. Timbuktu
6. Dambalou
7. Toroya
8. Saye Mogo Bana
9. Banani
10. Gnele
11. Tamagnoko
12. Dama

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #162151 in Music
• Released on: 2002-05-20
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
When European folk musicians go electric, the results usually have nothing to do with the style of their roots. Singer-songwriter Issa Bagayogo demonstrates that, in Mali, this is emphatically not the case: Timbuktu, which is the sequel to his debut disc Sya, is at once a 21st-century product and an affirmation of down-home local styles. In Mali they call what Issa does "Afro-electro", and this is apt, because the indigenous instruments fuse on equal terms with the gadgetry of the studio. Issa Bagayogo plays his ngoni lute with graceful economy, his backing singers keep their distance and the spacey synthesizer sounds clothe the whole thing in ambient mystery. Dance music this most certainly is, but at the same time it's so beguiling that you just want to keep still and imbibe this velvet-voiced singer's gentle art. --Michael Church