Amadou & Mariam - Dimanche à Bamako

Latitude Festival 2008, I had just witnessed one of my heroes, Julian Cope, seemingly melt down on stage, starting his set 30 minutes late, before smashing his bass, ranting unintelligably for 15 minutes about how we had to remember him when he's gone or words to that effect before having the power cut, leaving me genuinely worried for his health and wandering about in quite a depressed state for the next hour or so, until I wandered back into the same tent just in time to see Amadou & Mariam give one of the most joyous and celebratory sets I've ever seen. Immediate cheer up music! For those of you unfamiliar with their music, Amadou & Mariam are a blind married couple from Mali who have been making music together for over 30 years, although "Dimanche à Bamako" which was released in 2004 was their first album to sell many copies outside of Africa. Their music is kind of a blend of African blues pop and more recently they've worked with Damon Albarn, TV On The Radio and Dave Gilmour and toured with Blur, Coldplay, U2 and The Scissor Sisters.

look how happy they look!

It's a cold november day in Coventry as I type this, but as soon as you put this album on, with it's recordings of street sounds of Mali in between the tracks, you can almost feel the sun come out. Here's standout track La Réalité...