Lobi Traoré

Like his occasional collaborator and friend Ali Farka Touré, Lobi Traoré excelled on guitar, sang with warmth, and commanded respect as an interpreter of blues rooted in Malian traditions. Born in 1961 in the village of Bakaridiana, Mali, he was the son of two singers. At 16 he moved to Ségou, where three years later he first heard Zani Diabate & the Super Djata Band performing Bambara repertoire. That encounter led him to create and perform his own songs in Bambara. He began at weddings before moving to bars, most notably the Bozo. By the time he played there regularly, his sound had matured into fully formed blues. His audience expanded from local to regional and then international with the 1995 album Bamako, named for the Bozo’s city and issued by Buda Musique with Touré producing. Segou appeared in 1996 and Duga in 1998, both promoted through worldwide touring. World Village assembled tracks from those releases for the 2005 compilation Mali Blue. That same year the Lobi Traoré Group recorded for Honest Jon’s, the label part-owned by Blur’s Damon Albarn. In 2006 Traoré joined Dutch singer/guitarist Joep Pelt to make the duo album I Yougoba, released the following summer. Traoré and Pelt later performed at several Dutch festivals, and in 2008 their band toured the United States, including a stop at South by Southwest in Austin, TX. Excelsior, a Dutch label, reissued I Yougoba in 2009. On June 1, 2010, Lobi Traoré died suddenly in Bamako, Mali, at age 49 of apparent heart failure; he was survived by his wife and four children.