Live Report: Amadou & Mariam with The Blind Boys Of Alabama at the National Concert Hall, Dublin
By Pat Carty for Hot Press
This is a good idea, whoever dreamt it up. Malian husband and wife team Amadou and Mariam and Talladega Knights The Blind Boys Of Alabama have more in common than it might seem at first glance. The infectious music that Mr and Mrs Bagayoko produce has been described as “Afro-blues”, although there’s a lot more going on in it than that, and what is gospel music but the blues in a shirt and tie with its hair combed down for Sunday service? Alright, I may be over-simplifying there but as the theologian James Hal Cone put it “the blues and the spirituals flow from the same bedrock of experience, and neither is an adequate interpretation of black life without the other.” It’s all coming from the same source.
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