Yala

Oumou Sangaré is one of the great voices of West Africa, and her music is rooted in the wassoulou tradition of southern Mali — a form historically associated with women's song, with hunters' music, and with a directness of social critique that mainstream Malian music sometimes avoided. "Yala" moves on the distinctive wassoulou pulse, percussion and the kamalengoni (a youth version of the hunter's harp) creating a rhythmic foundation that feels earthy and joyful even when the subject matter is not. Sangaré sings about the conditions of women's lives — forced marriage, poverty, the gap between desire and circumstance — with a voice that is both gorgeous and combative, a soprano capable of great tenderness and also of real edge. She became famous young, at a time when her music was considered somewhat scandalous for its content, and she never softened her positions. "Yala" is the kind of song that fills village squares at harvest time and also challenges the village elders, which is exactly the wassoulou tradition's double function: celebration and critique, joy and insistence, all in the same breath.