African Music Post: Rokia Traore

image source: picsdigger

So beautiful!

Artist: Rokia Traoré
Song: M'Bifo
Country: Mali


BIO:

Rokia Traoré (born January 24, 1974) is an award-winning Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist. Born in Mali as a member of the Bambara ethnic group, her father was a diplomat and she travelled widely in her youth. Which exposed her to a wide variety of influences. 

While the Bambara have a tradition of performing at weddings, members of the nobility such as Rokia are discouraged from performing as musicians. Rokia attended lycée in Mali while her father was stationed in Brussels and started performing publicly as a university student in Bamako. Unusually for a female musician in Africa, Rokia plays acoustic guitar as well as sings, and she uses vocal harmonies in her arrangements which are rare in Malian music. 

On July 11, 2000, her second album Wanita was released. Traoré wrote and arranged the entire album. The album was widely acclaimed with The New York Times nominating it as one of its critics' albums of the year.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rokia_Traoré


Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/rokiatraore
Official site: http://www.rokiatraore.net/

MITNB