The Hippest Band You Don't Know

America's the only place where Amadou & Mariam are not stars. That's about to change.
Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia are unlikely pop stars. They’re a middle-aged couple from Mali’s capital city, Bamako, who started playing together in a house band for the city’s Institute for Young Blind People, where Amadou was a music teacher and Mariam a Braille student. Thirty years later, they’ve emerged as global pop’s band to watch—M.I.A. be damned—as heirs to the storied West African musical throne and as embodiments of the worldly, cosmopolitan flair that defines 21st century hipness.
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The music of Amadou & Mariam, as their band is named, is certainly drawing universal acclaim. Their 2005 album, Dimanche à Bamako (Sunday in Bamako), took Europe by storm. Its bold mishmash of genres and sounds from around the world garnered barrels of approving ink, sold 600,000 copies and won a Grammy nomination. It was helped along a good deal by the work and support of Manu Chao, who is Europe’s reigning superstar producer.

The Welcome to Mali follow-up in late 2008 similarly gripped Europe, while stateside, it cemented Amadou & Mariam as one of those bands for which you earn cool points for knowing and loving. They’ve been in high rotation on Los Angeles’ renowned KCRW music shows (you should stream Tom Schnabel’s Café L.A.—really). And the music webzine Pitchfork ranked the album’s opening track “Sabali” (Because) 15th on its list of top 100 songs of the year.