Amadou Bagayoko of Acclaimed Malian Duo Amadou & Mariam Dead at 70

Amadou Bagayoko, singer and guitarist in the Grammy-nominated Malian duo Amadou & Mariam, has died at the age of 70.

Mali’s Minister of Culture Mamou Daffé said on state TV that Bagayoko died Friday in the city of Bamako, his birthplace. Bagayoko’s family confirmed the death, adding that he “had been ill for a while,” though no cause of death was provided.

Bagayoko, who became blind at the age of 15 due to a congenital cataract, studied music at Mali’s Institute for the Young Blind, where he met his future wife and band mate, Mariam Doumbia, who had been blind since the age of 5. The pair performed together in Mali throughout the Seventies and Eighties before breaking out in Europe in the mid-Nineties.

As Amadou & Mariam, the duo brought Malian music to the world stage, attracting famous fans like Stevie Wonder, David Gilmour, and Damon Albarn; the latter enlisted the duo to take part in his Africa Express project, co-produced their Grammy-nominated 2009 album Welcome to Mali, and recruited Amadou & Mariam to open for Blur during that band’s reunion shows in 2009.

Bagayoko’s jaunty style of playing — fusing Malian music with a Western rock sound — landed him on Rolling Stone’s list of the 250 Best Guitarists. “People are often surprised when we explain how much we were influenced by Western pop music,” Amadou Bagayoko once told an interviewer. “I grew up listening to records by Rod Stewart, Led Zeppelin, James Brown, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Pink Floyd, Stevie Wonder … That’s because they were the only records we had in Mali!”

Over the past two decades, Amadou & Mariam were mainstays at music festivals around the world, including Glastonbury, Coachella, and Lollapalooza. The duo also served as opening act for stadium tours by the likes of Coldplay and U2.

Amadou & Mariam’s two most recent albums were 2012’s Folila — which featured collaborations with TV on the Radio, Santigold, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner, and Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears — and 2017’s La Confusion. In Sept. 2024, the duo took part in the closing ceremony at the 2024 Summer Paralympics in Paris, performing Serge Gainsbourg’s “Je suis venu te dire que je m’en vais.”