Just as we were a year ago, it feels like the latest stage of the
pandemic is shifting our world again, and there’s an unsureness
about what we’re heading towards. Taking these feelings of anxiety,
Malian singer/songwriter Fatoumata Diawara drew from her strengths:
her singing, her guitar, and her community of fellow musicians. With
a guest list that spans from South Africa to Cape Verde to Uganda to
the United States, Diawara has produced the new song, “Ambè,”
making its stateside debut this morning on Afropop Worldwide.
Hear “Ambè,” which translates from Bambara as “all together” right here:
Back during the
first lockdown, Malian singer/songwriter Fatoumata Diawara was
watching countries close their borders and feeling a descending fear.
“I was like ‘what
should I do? what can I do? could we do something together?’. I was
very afraid and at the same time I felt a huge amount of hope,”
Diawara stated in a press release. “Hope for me has always come
through my guitar and my voice. The first thing I did was to cry and
that always makes me feel better. The second thing was to sing and
put a smile back on my face. I then had the idea to write a song to
remind us all that no matter what color you are, which country you
come from, if you’re rich or poor, a doctor or poor person on the
street, we are all equal and all the same. COVID reminds us that we
are all one and that we should fight for love instead of fighting
over our differences.”
She considered
calling 100 people “and the song could’ve been one or two hours
long,” but settled for eight women—although, bringing in
Angelique Kidjo, Dianne Reeves, China Moses, Inna Modja, Somi, Mayra
Andrade, Thandiswa Mazwai and Terri Lyne Carrington is hardly
“settling” at all is it?
The lyrics—sung in Bambara, Fon, Zulu, Creole, Runyoro-Rutooro and
English—come back to themes of our collective fate and looking to
the future. It’s a song of hope for a world where we face problems
united, because COVID was the rare thing that affected us all. Of
course, in the year since the song was composed the response and
uneven global vaccine rollout have once again revealed the fissures
in the world that remain, but these artists are looking toward a
brighter, more compassionate future. As Cape Verde’s Mayra Andrade
sings in Creole:
The day will come when the sun high in the sky
Will rise over a
new world
A world where
love is law,
Love is law, Love
is law
As far as intercontinental efforts go, there’s a lot to learn right here.
