By Rula Eskaf
36-year-old Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara has never been a stranger to performing. At a young age, Diawara danced in her father’s company; at 18, she moved to France to pursue acting before returning to Mali to film movies; and at the age of 20, she ran away from home, returned to France, taught herself the guitar, and went on to be a multi-Grammy nominated singer-songwriter.
Her talent blossomed from the darkness of her childhood. Of the 11 children in her family, six of her siblings passed away; this prompted the people in her town to gossip, claiming Fatoumata was the cause. To cope with her sister’s death, Diawara would sing and dance until she fell into a trance-like state. This worried her parents and they decided to send the 11-year-old Fatoumata to stay with her aunt in the Malian capital, Bamako. She would not see her parents again for a decade.
While living with her aunt, Diawara started acting. At the age of 12, the director of Taafe Fangan (The Power of Women), struck by her presence and gave her a single line in the final scene. At 18, Diawara travelled to Paris to tour with a theatre troop, before returning to Mali to star in Sia, The Dream Python in 2001.
As more offers for roles came in, Fatoumata’s family arranged for her to settle down and get married. When the director of a renowned theatre company, Jean Louis Courcoult, travelled to Bamako to recruit Diawara, her family refused to give her permission to join the company (in Mali, unmarried women have the same rights as a minor). After much consideration, Diawara decided to run away, narrowly avoiding being caught by the police who had been alerted of her “kidnapping.”
Now she uses music to address the darkness that plagued her, and the social issues that still prevail in many parts of Africa, such as female genital mutilation and banning the practice. Her track “Boloko” from her 2011 album “Fatou” may seem like a mellow song, but the lyrics carry weight to those in areas of the world where FGM is prevalent.
Her most recent album, “Fenfo” (“Something To Say”), released in 2018, follows suit in her activism. After learning about the Libyan slave trade, Diawara recorded an anti-racism anthem, “Djonya.”
The album combines Wassoulou (a popular West African style of music primarily performed by women that incorporates themes like childbearing, fertility, and polygamy), 60’s R&B, and jazz into her acoustic style. “Fenfo” has a joyful sound, which acts as a subtle way to mask the pain of her past and as a call to activism. According to Diawara, “This is a survivor’s life... I want to show what I have learned, but also, I am not healed yet.”
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