AMADOU & MARIAM TO HEADLINE NORTH AMERICAN TOUR
IN JUNE BEFORE SUPPORTING
COLDPLAY IN JULY
Because Music/Nonesuch Records Will Release Welcome to Mali March 24
 Amadou & Mariam |
Since meeting at the Institute for Young Blind People in Bamako, Mali, three
decades ago, the singer Mariam Doumbia and her husband, the
guitarist/vocalist Amadou Bagayoko, have become enthusiastically embraced by
critics, fellow artists, and audiences in Europe and North America. Coldplay
just selected the duo to support the multi-platinum, multi-GRAMMY
Award-winning band in July on a tour of the U.S., in which Amadou & Mariam
will perform material from their highly acclaimed forthcoming album, Welcome
to Mali. In June, the duo will headline in a number of North American cities
and will perform at the Bonnaroo Festival. Please see below for an itinerary
of these summer shows.
The March 24 U.S. release of Welcome to Mali, on Because Music/Nonesuch
Records, follows numerous critical accolades for the album's 2008 U.K.
release. The recording made many Top Albums of the Year lists. In a
five-star review, London's Observer Music Monthly called it "the most
exciting pop album of 2008...Welcome to Mali will be appreciated by
millions not as 'world music,' but as the product of an authentically global
pop phenomenon."
Welcome to Mali follows Amadou & Mariam's GRAMMY-nominated 2005
breakthrough, Dimanche à Bamako, which they made in close collaboration with
Manu Chao. The new album's opening track, the Damon Albarn-produced
"Sabali," shows Amadou & Mariam investigating different ideas from those on
Dimanche. Albarn brings to the song a hip-hop rhythm and electronic elements
more akin to his Gorillaz productions than to anything traditionally Malian. "Sabali" placed 15th in Pitchfork's "100 Best Tracks of 2008," and the
widely read music blog Gorilla vs. Bear chose it as the "#5 Best Song of the
Year."
The rest of Welcome to Mali is produced by Amadou & Mariam's longtime
collaborators Marc-Antoine Moreau and Lauren Jais, who help the duo
integrate a diversity of other artists and sounds: the hip-hop of K'Naan and
Keziah Jones, the virtuosic kora playing of Nonesuch label mate Toumani Diabate, the funk of Juan Rozoff, the reggae of Côte d'Ivoire's Tiken Jah
Fakoly, and the indie rock of Mathieu Chedid, who is well-known in France
simply as M. The duo recorded the album in Bamako, Dakar, Paris, and London.
AMADOU & MARIAM U.S. TOUR
June 2
Chicago, IL
Park West
June 4
Toronto, ONT
Phoenix Concert Theatre
June 5
Montreal, QUE
Metropolis
June 6
Boston, MA
Paradise Rock Club
June 8
New York, NY
Webster Hall
June 9
Philadelphia, PA
World Café Live
June 10
Alexandria, VA
Birchmere
June 12
Manchester, TN
Bonnaroo
SUPPORTING COLDPLAY
July 10
Ridgefield, WA
The Amphitheater at Clark County
July 11
George, WA
The Gorge Amphitheatre
July 13
Mountain View, CA
Shoreline Amphitheatre
July 16
Chula Vista, CA
Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre
July 18
Carson, CA
Home Depot Center
July 21
Dallas, TX
Superpages.com Center
July 22
Houston, TX
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
July 24
Maryland Heights, MO
Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
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