The Magic Couple, by Amadou and Mariam, is a collection of the Malian duo’s greatest hits, but more than that, it’s a beautiful, upbeat, dance-meets-rock synergy of tribal rhythms and humming guitars. The album features 15 tracks that are evocative of their native Western Africa, and yet openly embrace the sounds of numerous other cultures and trends, without any trace of pandering or imitation.

Mariam Doumbia first met Amadou Bagayoko in Mali’s capital of Bamako in the 1970s, when they were students at Mali's Institute for the Young Blind. Sharing a passionate interest and talent in music, they joined forces in 1980, got married and eventually recorded and released six albums in total. As well as embracing the bluesy roots of their native land, the duo also incorporate sounds from India, Syria, Cuba and Egypt.

In addition to working with Latin superstar Manu Chao and composing the theme for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Amadou and Mariam have appeared at the prestigious Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and the enormous Rock in Rio concert. They even have hipster credibility: their 2008 song "Sabali" placed fifteenth on music website Pitchfork's Top 100 Best Tracks for that year. They’ve also been on several world tours, including most recently opening for British band Coldplay through their North American jaunt.

Amadou and Mariam also played their own concert at Toronto’s Harbourfront last month. Well-loved both at home and abroad, Amadou and Miriam are recognized as the first couple of so-called “world” music and certainly have been branded as ambassadors for their country’s cultural legacy. New listeners will find plenty of great sounds for grooving on The Magic Couple, released July 6th through Wrasse Records and filled with material culled from three of their most popular albums.

The album’s opening track, “Je Pense A Toi,” is a thoughtful ode arranged tastefully with a strumming guitar, simple drums, and a violin line that winds its way in and out of the melody in a similar fashion to the backup singers who join the pair at the chorus. Its faster-paced counterpart, “Mon Amour, Ma Cherie,” reiterates the ascending/descending choral structure but adds a rougher guitar and more raucous delivery, courtesy of Amadou himself. 

Another fast-paced song, “Poulu (Les Peuls)” is a driving, lively marriage of rhythm and melody, with plenty of harmonic variation courtesy of Mariam and the female back-up singers she’s paired with. It’s an interesting sonic experience to note how the female voices are every bit as aggressive as their male counterpart, their smooth lines giving way to staccato counterpoints that punctuate the languid lines of Amadou’s nearly-omnipresent guitar sounds.

“Sarama” adds yet another instrument to the audio arsenal. The track features a piano line that blends honky-tonk stylings with the swirling guitars made famous by fellow Malian musicians Tinariwen and Ali Farka Toure. “Combattants” is notable for the ways it blends old and new sounds into a seamless stream of pleas for unity. With the trend over the past few years to place blues music within an African context, many world music purveyors have recognized Mali and Western Africa’s influence on American music forms. Amadou and Mariam take this connection literally through many of The Magic Couple’s fifteen tracks, adding harmonica licks to “Combattants” and a rhythmic backbeat that echoes Bo Diddley, along with a Hammond organ and churning guitar sounds. 

This fusion is again highlighted in “Beki Miri,” which opens with a funky, bass-heavy mix with clanging guitars and flute line, recalling the best of Parliament Funkadelic and even Stevie Wonder. “C’est La Vie” is the closing track on The Magic Couple, but it’s hardly the quiet send-off you might expect. Featuring fast drums, a spiky electric guitar line, and a trumpet that drops in and out (heavily recalling Sly and the Family Stone’s “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”), the pair’s determined, plaintive calls of “that’s life” sounds more like an evocation of determination rather than any kind of resignation. For Amadou and Mariam, it’s fitting.

The Magic Couple is captivating, enlivening, and yes, entirely magical for its blending of old and new sounds, and though it isn’t in English, the good-time feel of the beats an catchy melodies is more than enough to put a smile on the face of any listener. For long time fans, it’s a celebration of the duo’s unity as a couple as well as their musical prowess; for new listeners, it’s a joyous entry into an entirely new, and yet strangely familiar, sonic universe. John Lee Hooker will never sound the same.

Written by Catherine Kustanczy