This is part 6 of a 6-part series. Some of the greatest songs come out of the most trying circumstances. Mandjou is one such song. It featured on the eponymous 1978 album and had been composed when ...

Salif Keita is known today as the "golden voice" of Africa, but in his youth he was an outcast, unaccepted by his community because he was born with albinism. Turning to music as an outlet, Keita rose ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. “I wanted to put some distance between me and music. I was bored, perhaps?” In the mouth of Mali’s most-storied ...

Shock. Bafflement. Scepticism. These were some of the reactions among a group of music fans when Mali's much-beloved Salif Keïta - known as the Golden Voice of Africa - was appointed as a special ...