Fatoumata Diawara: NPR Music Front Row

One of the breakout stars from this year's edition of New York City's globalFEST, Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara had the Webster Hall crowd wrapped around her finger. Gifted with enormous stage presence and great looks, Diawara— who was a dancer and actor before she joined iconic Malian vocalist Oumou Sangare's band as a backup singer — put on a tightly choreographed set that screamed with energy and edged toward rock and funk. It's an evolution even from the way she presented the same songs in a far more sedate singer-songwriter style on her debut album, Fatou, which came out last year.

Now based in France, Diawara tends toward socially conscious lyrics in any case, but her globalFEST appearance had a special poignancy and urgency: As she noted during her performance, a new civil war, spurred by Islamist forces in Mali's north, has cracked her ancestral country wide open — and music has been banned in Islamist-controlled areas. -- ANASTASOA TSIOULCAS


SET LIST
"Soncolo"
"Sowa"
"Bissa"
"Kele"
"Mon Afrique"
"Alama"
"Tounkan"
"Salimata"


CREDITS
Producers: Mito Habe-Evans, Anastasia Tsioulcas
Videographers: Christopher Parks, A.J. Wilhelm
Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait
Video Editor/Assistant Producer: Denise DeBelius
Special Thanks to: Webster Hall, globalFEST 2013
Executive Producers: Anya Grundmann, Keith Jenkins