Consumer Guide Album

Amadou & Mariam: Dimanche à Bamako [Nonesuch, 2005]
No Malians more eagerly downplay their nation's sun-slowed intensity than this Parisian couple, so it was a good idea to introduce them to Manu Chao, whose breakthrough concept gentled up international sounds into reggae lite with brains. Though the pair's warp and weave are softened as a result, the beat remains theirs, and though they're less brainy than Chao, there's bite in their ineluctable Malian-ness. For social content, they take on the danger truck drivers pose to giraffes, hippopotamuses, elephants, chickens, and children. A−