Amadou & Mariam: "Sabali"

It’s almost an “Everything In Its Right Place” moment, finding Amadou & Mariam subtly bursting through world music shackles in a simultaneously natural and progressive way. Mariam’s vocals start tinny, far away, sounding like a dusty field recording, and then suddenly there are synths, a drum machine. Amadou’s inimitable guitar is nowhere to be found, only rising choruses of arpeggiated keyboards and multitracked Mariams. It’s the kind of jump, lightyears from their well-trodden mixture of Mali blues and world music affectations, that could easily end in disaster.

But far from being some half-baked experiment, “Sabali” is a revelation, even if the rest of the album finds them closer to familiar territory. Mariam is often shunted aside as if her vocal contributions are more Linda McCartney than Art Garfunkel, with the attention inevitably gravitating towards Amadou’s powerfully rhythmic guitar. To give her the album opening showcase, produced by post-colonial dilettante du jour Damon Albarn (this time copping from his “Feel Good Inc.” playbook of space and distance), recontextualizes the duo not just apart from Manu Chao, whose influence dominated Dimanche A Bamako (2005), but also as equals rather than a sort of Jack/Meg hierarchy.

Most of all, though, it’s just a kick-ass song. It’s unassuming, yet with your defenses down the simply sequenced melodies are deeply affecting. Even when the vocals drop the radio effect, there is something in Mariam’s plaintive style and the foreignness of the words that has the capability to send shivers. “Sabali” is the sound of an ambitious pair of musicians effortlessly slipping into a completely new guise without sacrificing anything that made them remarkable to begin with, an exciting move that is rarely accomplished so naturally, rarer still with such grace and restraint.