Les Amazones d’Afrique began in 2017 as a “sisterly supergroup of singers” from the west African country of Mali.
The group’s name is inspired by the Dahomey Amazons, “an army of female warriors” who protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey for 200 years, said Chinonso Ihekire in Rolling Stone. Their goal was to champion gender equality and draw attention to the “pressing issue of violence against women”.
Although their line-up has changed so many times that they make the “Conservative front bench seem a model of consistency”, said Clive Davis in The Times, “women’s rights are still the group’s raison d’être”.
Mamani Keïta, the only original member, is joined by Beninoise singer Fafa Ruffino, Ivorians Kandy Guira and Dobet Gnahoré, Nigerian singer Nneka and the Congolese star Alvie Bitemo for this latest album, “Musow Danse”, meaning “women’s dance”. There is also a “dominant presence in the studio” from Irish producer Jacknife Lee, whose pop credits range from U2 to Snow Patrol and Taylor Swift, said Davis.
This doesn’t mean the women are in “generic crossover territory” with this new album. Instead, its “rousing songs” sung in languages including Bambara and Fon are not watered down too much by “Lee’s cascade of electronica”.
Instead, the album “seduces with glee, setting soothing traditional harmonies atop varied tempos”, said Ihekire in Rolling Stone. This is “more dynamic and cohesive” than the group’s previous albums in its embrace of “electro-pop, funk, and folk fusions”.
Their “pan-African female solidarity”, has a “Congotronic hustle”, said David Honigmann in the Financial Times. And nowhere is their message conveyed more elegantly than in “full polyphonic flow” on “Kuma Fo”.
“Whatever they say,” goes the chorus, “whatever they have to say, whatever women have to say is worth listening to.”
Like the female warriors of Dahomey, now Benin, the band are “going on a war”, singer Ruffino told the radio programme Afropop Worldwide in 2019. “It’s a war to defend women’s rights.”
With this “spirit” and their “powerful performances”, said Ihekire, Les Amazones have made “one of the great pan-African consciousness LPs in modern history”.