African music in Portland: Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara (Fatou) and Saratone will be performing on April 13th at the Star Theater. Get your tickets soon for this great show! Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara (aka Fatou) was born in the Ivory Coast in 1982 then raised in Mali. As a child she became a member of her fathers dance troupe and was a popular performer of the wildly flailing didadi dance from Wassoulou, her ancestral home in western Mali. She was an energetic and headstrong girl and at the age of twelve her refusal to go to school finally prompted her parents to send her to live and be disciplined by an aunt in Bamako. She was not to see her parents again for over a decade. At the age of eighteen Fatou travelled to Paris to perform the classical Greek role of Antigone on stage. After touring with the production she returned to Mali where she was given the lead in Dani Kouyatés popular 2001 film Sia, The Dream of the Python. The film tells the story of a West African legend called Sia, a young girl who defies tradition. To many in Mali, Guinea, Senegal and Burkina Faso, Fatou is Sia thanks to the films enormous success throughout the region. Offers for further acting roles poured in but Fatous family wanted her to settle down and marry and forced her to announce, live on Malian television, that she was abandoning her career... READ MORE at souldoutfestival/performers/Fatoumata-Diawara#title
Posted on: Tue, 08 Apr 2014 03:23:56 +0000