The cassette could hardly have looked more modest: a simple photograph of two, casually dressed musicians wearing sunglasses, one holding an acoustic guitar, the other facing a microphone, both looking shy and serious. Printed words on a yellow background above and below the photo read: Couple Aveugle du Mali, Vol. 1.

“Blind Couple of Mali” seemed a heavy-handed promotional phrase, but my Bamako cassette merchant assured me that the act was popular, and he quickly pulled a copy of their latest, Volume 4, on the cover of which the couple appeared in formal wear, still wearing sunglasses, smiling amiably, and now identified as Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia. The year was 1993, and these were among some 50 cassettes I brought home from Bamako for possible broadcast on the public radio program Afropop Worldwide. As I recall, neither one made the show. Volume 1 featured six, simple songs backed only by that acoustic guitar. Volume 4 offered stronger singing, and some rocking, electric lead guitar, but stiff, drum machine production made it otherwise hard to distinguish from the crop of inspired, but flawed, Malian roots pop. Apparently, I missed a diamond in the rough, for I had no clue that four international CDs later, Amadou and Mariam would be one of the most celebrated acts in world music.

The morning after the couple played two sold-out sets at Joe’s Pub in New York last August, Amadou conceded his own surprise, as well. “We couldn’t have imagined this,” he said, casting his mind back to those early recordings, hastily made in a studio in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, “all the success, traveling around the world. We just wanted to play music together. We thought that ours was a story that would work in Mali, but beyond that, we never imagined.” Amadou and Mariam’s latest release, Dimanche a Bamako (Nonesuch), has a story of its own. Manu Chao, the offbeat prince of European world music, produced the album, co-writing some of its 15 songs, playing guitar, singing and programming throughout. Chao’s presence helps to explain why the CD quickly sold 100,000 copies when it was released in France, but he can’t take all the credit for this album’s runaway success. Long before they met Chao, Amadou and Mariam had come upon a winning formula for blending the Bambara music of their ancestors with raw, rootsy rock ’n’ roll. Bridging palpable brashness and irresistible warmth, the Malian couple has a sound like nothing else in African pop, and it all begins with that story Amadou referred to, the story of how this husband-and-wife team met at an institute for the blind in Bamako in 1975. Amadou was 20; Mariam was 17, and they knew very quickly that they were destined to be together.

“Which came first, love or music?” I asked. “Music first,” said Mariam, without a pause. “I went to the institute for blind youth in 1973 to learn Braille. He came and found me there.” Amadou was already a professional musician by then, playing guitar alongside the legendary Salif Keita in the groundbreaking dance band Les Ambassadeurs du Motel. In the beginning, all Amadou and Mariam could talk about was music, but not the new Manding crossover Keita was pioneering, or indeed any of the new forms bubbling up in post-independence Mali. For these youngsters, the list of musical heroes began with Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Wonder, Johnny Hallyday, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Led Zeppelin, Cream… “Pink Floyd too,” added Mariam, as her husband rattled off familiar names. Les Ambassadeurs are well remembered today for the work of Salif Keita, but for Amadou, music not reflected in that group’s surviving recordings was more formative. “There were a lot of other singers,” Amadou recalled. “There were some who sang James Brown songs, Otis Redding songs, Wilson Pickett, Bad Company, also French songs, and international repertoire, tango, waltzes, blues, jazz. We did all that.” Who knew? This helps to explain why, when Amadou and Mariam finally made it to a recording studio in 1987, they sidestepped tradition and sang their own, uncategorizable songs. “We were not traditional,” Amadou insisted. “No Malians thought of us that way. Even when we sang traditional songs, we didn’t want to sing them like traditional singers. I didn’t want to play guitar like an ngoni [a traditional lute]. I wanted to play according to my own influences.”

The Bamako public already knew and loved Amadou and Mariam by the time those cassettes began appearing. In fact, from their first joint appearance with a band of blind musicians from the institute in 1976, the couple unfailingly won over audiences with their stage chemistry. Listening back now to Volume 4, one finds the fundamental sound intact. Amadou’s raspy gut cry contrasts with Mariam’s plaintive, vibrato-less lyricism, and for all the keyboards and electronic beats, Amadou’s guitar neatly spans edgy blues-rock and the fleet melodies of Malian string music. Amadou said, “We are more or less the first artists in Mali music to create a style that is both blues and rock, and Malian at the same time. But at that time, there were no good recording studios in Mali. There were no real record labels, and no producers. Everyone was going to Ivory Coast, and that’s why we also went there in 1986.” Fast forward 12 years, and Amadou and Mariam, with six cassette volumes to their credit, are spending time in Paris, and getting ready to record their international CD debut, Sou ni Tilé. “Sou ni Tilé was our chance,” said Amadou. “For the first time, we had enough time in the studio, and enough means to bring people in.” Inviting other musicians, whether French, Moroccan or Indian, was always interesting for Amadou and Mariam, and this record showed them to be flexible and able collaborators. They followed up with Tje ni Mousso in 1999, and Wati in 2002, and began to build a loyal following in Europe with their exhilarating stage performances. The genesis of Dimanche a Bamako came when Manu Chao got his hands on Wati. He soon collected all of Amadou and Mariam’s CDs, and after a lot of listening, arranged a meeting with the Malians. They got together at Studio Davout in Paris in October 2003. “He didn’t come with the idea that we would work right away,” recalled Amadou, but no sooner did Amadou and Mariam begin playing some of their new songs than Chao broke out his guitar and began strumming along. He too had a song, a playful travelogue called “Senegal Fast Food.” This would become one of the strongest songs on the eventual album, a perfect blend of Chao’s light, whimsical, multi-layered approach, and the Malians’ penchant for a raucous, anthem-like vocal hook.

Amadou says they composed their part on the spot the first time they heard the song. “He sang it and we wanted to add to it. We liked the part about how it’s midnight in Tokyo and five o’clock in Mali, but what time is it in Paradise? So then we sang in Bambara. We said we are all in the same boat, but nobody knows where we are going. So the best thing is for those who have gone on an adventure to a strange land to think about those they left behind in their country. If they’re in the big city, they must think about their parents and friends who have stayed behind in small villages.” The session went so well that the musicians resolved to make a record together, and spent then next three days laying down basic tracks. Three months later, they got together to continue the work, this time in Bamako. Chao came with his own recording gear, and during his two-week-plus stay, they found time for some adventuring, including an excursion to Malian’s northern desert to play a set at the legendary Festival in the Desert, outside Timbuktu. “To go to Timbuktu,” said Amadou, “you have to cross a lot of Mali. It’s about 1000 km. So he saw Malian life. And then we returned and played in Bamako, at a little place called the Djembe in Lafiabougou.” The Djembe is a bustling, funky Bamako nightspot, presently home to the Super Rail Band of Bamako. Through all of this, Chao ran his tape recorder, collecting voices and ambient sounds to interweave throughout the music, making the album’s songs flow together in an audio tapestry, a trademark of his production style. Dimanche a Bamako is truly an amalgam of sensibilities. The grooves end up lighter and more techno than Amadou and Mariam’s standard fare, and more driving than, say, Chao’s celebrated work on Clandestino (1998). Even on the level of lyrics, contrasting perspectives rub shoulders amiably. From Amadou’s celebration of village life, “La Fête au Village,” we go to Chao’s moody, even macabre “Camions Sauvages,” a meditation on the bush trucks that haunt the lonely, worn roads of Mali, long hours and faulty brakes resulting in the deaths of “chickens…children…giraffes…elephants.”

Only the song “Coulibaly” approaches the raw Malian rock sound of earlier Amadou and Mariam work. But even where the music has been tweaked and colored in peculiarly Manu Chao ways, the Malians’ sunny vibe and upbeat perspective shines through. “Beaux Dimanches,” with its French language refrain, “Sundays in Bamako are the days of weddings,” has become a hit in Bamako. Chao’s presence is felt in the spare, disco beat and mariachi-like trumpet accompaniment. Amadou says the song is now commonly heard on cell phone ring tones and played at every wedding in the city. Amadou was unsure whether the Bamako public would accept music this experimental, but he was proud to report that the album is their greatest success yet back home. Maybe the most significant departure for Amadou and Mariam is a brush with political commentary, something that has never entered their repertoire before. The couple’s second son, Samou, is a fledgling rapper. Rap is a gathering force in Bamako today, encouraging young artists to become politically engaged in ways their parents never dared. One day, Samou and his brother were rehearsing a refrain, “Politic Amagni,” Bambara for “Politics is bad.” Amadou recalled, “They were singing this at the house, and Manu was there. He listened, and then he took his guitar and they started working together to make the song. Manu also added things. He came up with these English words: ‘Politics needs blood; politics needs lies…Politics is violence.’” Before they were through, Chao was singing in Bambara, and Amadou and Mariam were adding lines of their own. “But we did not get into the idea that politics is bad,” said Amadou. “If you go into politics, you have to avoid violence, and you have to avoid corruption. We like honest men and women, people who can build the country. So that’s what we sang.”