Quick Overview

Now comes an intriguing, sophisticated and often intimate set that is quite unlike any of the other great music Mali has produced. The result is an exquisitely recorded set that manages to sound contemporary but still distinctively African. It's remarkable mostly because of the quality and range of her singing, which can be quietly slinky and personal, rousing, as well as breathy. The songs are mostly in Bambara, with two in French and one in English - a wildly individual treatment of the Gershwin classic The Man I Love, that starts as a brooding ballad and ends as a scat work-out. Traore has become the experimental diva of Africa.