“Bienvenue, bienvenue à la maison / Bon séjour, bon séjour à la maison” ( “Welcome, welcome home / Enjoy your stay, enjoy your stay at home”). With this invitation, Amadou and Mariam open their record. This sense of hospitality is deeply rooted in them. It runs through their work, never faltering. Simple words, yet they carry so much meaning: the importance of family, and, if you scratch beneath the surface, the necessity of offering refuge to strangers. The act of welcoming, the will to do so. The intimate made universal. This has always been the Malian duo’s recurring declaration of intent, consistently serving as unifying messengers. The track also features a Rolling Stones-like introduction, instruments cascading in one by one, the warm embrace of the chorus, and immediately recognizable guitar harmonies. For context, “Bienvenue à la maison” was one of Amadou Bagayoko’s favorite songs. He danced to it endlessly during the studio sessions. On April 4, 2025, Mariam Doumbia’s lifelong partner joined his idols Jimi Hendrix and John Lee Hooker in the paradise of virtuoso singer-guitarists. A sad and brutal reality. Inevitably, one looks back. The dizzying arc of an extraordinary career, firmly anchored on the international stage. From massive festivals (Coachella, Lollapalooza, Glastonbury) to exceptional events (World Cup opening concert, Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, Paralympic Games closing ceremony), from opening for giants (U2, Coldplay) to collaborations as prestigious as they were cosmopolitan (Damon Albarn, M, Akon, Santigold), to a Grammy nomination, Amadou and Mariam ceaselessly projected their music across the globe. A tone, an Afro-fusion, a lifesaving curiosity. And that overwhelming bond that united them for nearly fifty years: civil union, explosive artistic partnership, and musical complementarity. Not to mention the sung declarations of love woven through much of their repertoire. Hearing Mariam sing “Chéri je t’aime jusqu’à la mort” (in French: “Darling, I love you to death” from “M’Bife Blues”) or “Avec toi chéri, la vie est belle” (in French: “With you darling, life is beautiful” from “Sabali”) now takes on a whole new resonance. As does the title of this ninth album, L’amour à la folie (Love to Madness), knowing it was completed in full before Amadou’s passing. This is a record of returning to the roots, endowed with full expressive power. A record where traditional instruments coexist with electronic artillery, Malian blues with European sonorities, heritage with fraternity, learning with wisdom. A long-term project, shaped across sessions in Barcelona, Bamako, Paris. It crystallizes what the duo strove to honor throughout their journey: to express as authentically as possible impulses, observations, doubts, declarations of love, statements and worries. Embedded within are transmissions of knowledge, the fruits of their experiences and numerous journeys, along with a shared call to take responsibility and work for peace. At its center stands Amadou’s guitar, the third vital force of this new collection of songs, under the guidance of producer-arranger Pierre Juarez. He reconnected with the Malian couple after working with them in 2017 on one track of the Lamomali album, where the connection was immediate. Longtime collaborator of singer Claire Laffut, nicknamed “the astronaut” by Toumani Diabaté and also behind Fatoumata Diawara’s latest record, Juarez knows how to surf the ridges of African music. His attraction to spatial sounds, his penchant for vocal treatments tactfully accompany the fluidity and essence so characteristic of Amadou and Mariam. This finely tuned balance also attracted Busy Twist, a leading figure in the new underground dance scene, who traveled to Mali to work with them. Capable of fusing an impressive variety of sounds from all over the world, the borderless British producer has infused Afro, Latin, and Caribbean influences into projects for artists such as Alewya, Greentea Peng, and Bomba Estéreo. Here, he produced three tracks, including La vie est belle (Life is Beautiful), a previously unreleased song from the 2024 best-of, infused with an irresistible syncopated rhythm. It now gains new visibility, as does the danceable Mogolu, a reunion track with Manu Chao, twenty years after the emblematic album Dimanche à Bamako (Sunday in Bamako). An exotic-beat ego trip celebrating their return home (Nakan), a festive groove wrapping around the couple’s imperative need for communication (Je t’aime à la folie – I love you like crazy), English pop-rock flavors tackling the struggles of difficult marriages (Furu). Amadou and Mariam continue to work, mostly in Bambara, toward this union of body and spirit. They join forces with Fally Ipupa, prince of Congolese rumba, and push back against the destructive venom of rumors in a modern lo-fi-tinged blues (Sonfo). There are also songs tied to Mali’s situation, and by extension the world’s faltering state, that call for awakening: Généralisé (Generalized) with its Pink Floyd-like atmosphere, On veut la paix (We Want Peace) with its 60s sound-system aesthetic. And finally, the incantatory closing track Tanu, a hymn to solidarity, which ends with “Je vous suis reconnaissant, je vous salue” ( “I am grateful to you, I salute you”). Amadou’s final, elegant bow.

dj.henri has long specialized in the music of Mali, Guinea, and the Saharan Maghreb, opening for Vieux Farka Toure five times, Salif Keita three times, Fatoumata Diawara twice, Bombino twice, Oumou Sangare, Mdou Moctar, Tinariwen, Sona Jobarteh, Etran de l’Air, Rokia Traore, and Habib Koite. He’s been booked at the Apollo Theater, Summerstage, B.B. King’s, Brooklyn Bowl, and many other venues. For several years, he opened “Desert Blues” shows for the World Music Institute. His station Radio Africa Online is the longest-running African all-music station online, he writes a column for afropop.org, and his podcast, Radio Africa Online Mixes, is featured in Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, and elsewhere, enjoying more than 10 terabytes of traffic annually.