Lobi Traoré was a Mali

Mali

Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...

an musician. He was born in the village of Bakaridianna, on the Niger River

Niger River

The Niger River is the principal river of western Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in southeastern Guinea...

 close to Ségou

Ségou

Ségou is a city in south-central Mali, lying northeast of Bamako on the River Niger, in the region of Ségou. It was founded by the Bozo people, on a site about from the present town...

 and died in Bamako. His singing has been described in The Economist

The Economist

The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...

as "flat, strangely penetrating tone, somewhere between rap and blues".

His breakthrough album, Bamako, produced by Ali Farka Touré

Ali Farka Touré

Ali Ibrahim “Farka” Touré was a Malian singer and guitarist, and one of the African continent’s most internationally renowned musicians. His music is widely regarded as representing a point of intersection of traditional Malian music and its North American cousin, the blues...

, was released in 1994. It was voted one of the best rock albums of the year by Libération

Libération

Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...

and one of the best world music albums by Le Monde

Le Monde

Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...

.

Discography

• Bambara blues (1992)
• Bamako (1994)
• Ségou (1996)
• Duga (1999)
• Mali Blue (2004)
• The Lobi Traoré Group (2005)
• Barra Coura (2005)
• Bwati Kono (2010)
• Rainy Season Blues (2010)

External links

• mondomix.com
• mali-music.com (in French)