African music lost one of its titans last week with the death of Amadou Bagayoko, a guitarist who recorded with American rock stars, performed at the Nobel concert for Barack Obama, and became a national icon in his home, Mali.
With his wife, the singer Mariam Doumbia, Mr. Bagayoko composed the duo Amadou & Mariam, which rose to international fame in the 2000s and 2010s with hits like “Beautiful Sundays.”
Mr. Bagayoko was 70 when he died last week, of complications from a malaria infection. He and his wife, who is 66, were scheduled to perform across Europe next month. And while their fame has faded in the United States since the peak of their global success, they remained huge celebrities in Europe and in West Africa, where their music inspired generations of artists.
We asked relatives and friends of Mr. Bagayoko for their favorite songs by Amadou & Mariam, and the significance of the guitarist and his music — a blend of blues riffs, guitar solos, and djembe — to them.
‘Toubala Kono’
Cheick Tidiane Seck, a keyboard player who knew Mr. Bagayoko since the guitarist was 14, was in neighboring Ivory Coast for a concert last week when Mr. Bagayoko died.
Mr. Seck opened the concert with “Toubala Kono,” a song he wrote with Mr. Bagayoko, whom he called a “brother.”
But he couldn’t finish performing it, he said in an interview, adding, “I would have collapsed.”
With only a spare, reverberating guitar doing circular riffs, the song revolves around loneliness, a feeling that Mr. Seck said had haunted him since his friend’s death.
‘Mogoya’
Sam Bagayoko is the only one of Mr. Bagayoko’s and Ms. Doumbia’s three children who embraced a musical career. He had toured with his parents and was in Paris to organize their planned concerts in France this summer when Mr. Bagayoko died.
His parents were especially proud of how their songs kept appealing to younger generations, he said in a telephone interview from Bamako, Mali’s capital and the family’s home, where visitors were coming this week to pay tribute.
His favorite song is “Mogoya,” which he composed for his parents to perform with him. In the song, he plays the guitar with his father while his mother sings about daily life in Mali and promises that people often fail to keep.
“It was always an honor to play with my parents, but this was our last collaboration together,” said Sam, who is 45. “I will never see nor hear my father’s guitar anymore.”
‘I Think About You’
Idrissa Soumaoro, a well-known musician and singer in Mali, met Mr. Bagayoko in 1973, when at 19 years old he joined the band Les Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako.
He quickly saw that “Amadou was bright and ambitious,” he said.
Later in that decade, Mr. Soumaoro trained Mr. Bagayoko and Ms. Doumbia at a Malian national school for blind people, where they deepened their friendship. (Mr. Bagayoko was blind, as is his wife.)
At the school, Mr. Soumaoro said, they would listen to blues for hours in a rehearsal room, working on tonalities in what Mr. Soumaoro called “research work like I’ve never done with any other musician.”
Mr. Soumaoro picked “I Think About You,” a love song that the duo released in 2005, saying, that the couple’s love “was also part of their success.”
“In it, Amadou sings, ‘I think about you, don’t abandon me,’” said Mr. Soumaoro, who is 75. “He didn’t abandon her, but the sad reality is that he has left her.”
He added, “I hope Mariam will have the strength to bear life.”
Elian Peltier is The Times’ West Africa correspondent, based in Dakar, Senegal.
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