Bamako: Africa's heart beat

Bamako is a dusty, low-rise sprawl of earth-coloured buildings on nameless streets. Open sewers run alongside dirt roads. A petro-haze hangs in the heat and raggedy kids run with the traffic shouting for alms. This is a poor town. But it's a lovable one. Mali's capital is a trading centre which deals in music.

If you've heard of Bamako, or even been there, it's likely to be because you – like many others – are a fan of Amadou and Mariam, Salif Keita, Toumani Diabaté, the late Ali Farka Toure or one of the other Malian acts to have found international success. Music has been exported from here for a long time. In his book Deep Blues, the musicologist Robert Palmer traced a thread of flattened thirds and syncopation from the griots – the "praise singers" or wandering bards of West Africa – to the early bluesmen of Mississippi's turn-of-the-century plantations. African music was carried to the New World in the heads of slaves.

It's no longer a one-way street. Ry Cooder, Corey Harris and Robert Plant are among those who have travelled to Mali to play with local musicians. And, perhaps most famously, Damon Albarn's 2002 album Mali Music, recorded in Bamako, was a collaboration with Malian stars. Albarn has been back often, most recently to make a report for BBC Radio 4's Today programme which he "guest edited" at Christmas. The piece we made – I'm a Today producer – focused on Bamako's extraordinary recycling markets, where waste of all kinds is reinvented. But our evenings were spent looking for music.

Bamako's club scene sets the place apart from other West African capitals. There are music clubs all over the city. Most are simple, dark, concrete rooms equipped with ancient sound systems and a ceiling fan. They attract crowds of smiling, sweating music-lovers swigging bottles of Flag beer. Some venues have outside areas where, tired from wild dancing, bodies lie cooling in the night air. Reminiscent of the best Mississippi Delta juke joints, these clubs are all a music bar should be: no pretension, just a place to have a good time.

One of the best clubs is owned by Toumani Diabaté himself. A star in Mali, he frequently plays to an adoring crowd in his relatively upmarket venue. Though he wasn't there the night we visited (it's pot luck) his band were keeping the punters on their feet. Like most Malian bands, they used a fascinating mix of traditional and modern instruments. We saw the ngoni, a type of lute with a stretched animal skin covering, and the kora, a string instrument made from a hollowed gourd, competing with electric guitars and layers of percussion.

Malian music is immediately accessible to the uninitiated European ear, such as mine. Perhaps that's because the music of my generation owes so much to the blues and, by extension, to the music of West Africa. Or perhaps, today, musical influence washes back and forth to such a degree that it's no longer easy to hear where one theme ends and another starts. Either way, it's certainly easy to understand why Malian musicians have been so successful in Europe. They rock.

As we careered through the late-night streets from one club to the next, we got a call from a French producer who works with Amadou and Mariam. They were rehearsing on a roof with their full band. Would we like to go along? We certainly would.

Amadou and Mariam met in 1977 at the Institute for the Blind in Bamako. They were both playing in the Institute's orchestra. They married in 1980 and began performing as a duo. In 1986 they started recording and achieving some success in the region. A lot has happened since. Their 2004 album Dimanche à Bamako went to the top of the French charts and has sold in big numbers across Europe.

We could hear their house before we could see it. Atop the four-storey block box that they share with their extended family, Amadou and Mariam were playing a full set, at volume, under the dark night sky. Neighbours were leaning against their windows, listening. Passers-by were slowing on the dirt road to gaze up, smiling, at people dancing on the roof. It wouldn't happen in London. No-one seemed surprised by our arrival. A mother moved her toddlers to clear a place for me to lean against the wall.

I stood with my back to the band. As they worked at a song over and over till they were sure they had it right, I stared out at the city. Smoke mingled over the flat rooftops, car lights were creating crazy shadows; a strange scene with the perfect soundtrack. The city itself is not obviously beautiful but there is beauty in it: in the quality of its light, the texture of its walls, the richness of its colours and in the dynamism of its people.

An aged photographer, Malick Sidibé, has captured these better than anyone. Sidibé has spent his life photographing the city and he has won international acclaim. Last year, he received the Golden Lion lifetime achievement award at the Venice Biennale – the first time it has been awarded to a photographer. The Biennale's art director said "no African artist has done more to enhance photography's stature". You might think such an eminent figure would be elusive. But that's not the Bamako way. When I asked a taxi driver to take me to Sidibé's studio I was deposited by the side of the road, next to the photographer himself sleeping in a deckchair.

Sidibé's studio is, in fact, little more than a concrete room with a desk almost entirely hidden under tattered boxes of prints and what must be Africa's highest pile of Rolleiflex camera parts.

I tentatively woke Sidibé in the hope that I might view some prints – perhaps even buy one – but though charming, he was reluctant. It was clear that to navigate the precarious towers of boxes would require considerable effort and that such effort should not be expended in the midday heat. After some negotiation with his son, however, I was given permission to tackle the towers myself. In a box marked "1962" I found a group portrait of the members of a Bamako boxing club. They are trying to look tough, fists raised and strapped, but they are aware that they are taking themselves too seriously; one suspects the shutter closed just before they collapsed into laughter. It's innocent, because they are young men having fun together, and it's poignant because the Bamako of 1962 looks very like the Bamako of today. Would they have expected that? Sidibé seemed surprised by my discovery and sold the print with a shrug.

Later that day we were able to hear the fruits of Amadou and Mariam's rehearsal at a concert in aid of World Toilet Day. Apparently, two out of five of the world's people have no access to basic sanitation, a problem that contributes to the deaths of 1.5 million children a year. That's perhaps why the event was treated with total seriousness in Mali where the organisers had somehow assembled an all-star line-up for a concert, which I count myself very fortunate to have seen. The city's Soviet-style concert hall, packed with a delighted crowd of young Malians, shakes to the sounds of Salif Keita, Amadou and Mariam and several other extraordinary artists. There can't have been many better gigs anywhere in the world that day. Or even that week.

Though a steady number of Britons make their way to Timbuktu for Mali's annual Festival au Desert, relatively few stick around Bamako long enough to get a feel for the city and its club scene. They should. Africa is so often packaged for tourists as a place to view ancient heritage. Bamako's music scene is happening right now. It's heritage-in-the-making. It took a British musician to point it out to me (as he has done to countless others through Mali Music) but anyone who wants to explore contemporary West African culture should think about starting in a Bamako nightclub on a Friday night.

The next Africa Express concert (www.africaexpress.co.uk) takes place on 6 March at Liverpool Olympia, West Derby Road, Liverpool from 7.30pm. Tickets (£10) are available from 0871 220 0260; www.gigsandtours.com

Traveller's guide

GETTING THERE

Bamako is served by Afriqiyah Airways (020-7631 1840; www.afriqiyah.aero) from Gatwick via Tripoli and by Air France (0870 142 4343; www.airfrance.com) from Paris with connections from various UK airports.

Tour operators offering trips to Mali include Bales Worldwide (0845 057 1819; www.balesworldwide.com) and Footloose Adventure Travel (01943 604 030; www.footlooseadventure.co.uk). A 10-day trip with Footloose costs from £1,060, including B&B accommodation, some meals, all transfers, excursions and guide. International flights and visas are excluded.

STAYING THERE

Hotel Mande, Bamako (00 223 221 1993; www.mandehotel.com). B&B from €82 (£63).

Hotel Sofitel L'Amitie Bamako (00 223 221 4321; www.sofitel.com). Doubles start at €€139 (£107), room only.

VISITING THERE

The next Festival au Desert (www.festival-au-desert.org) takes place in January 2009.

RED TAPE AND MORE INFORMATION

Britons require a visa to enter Mali, obtainable for €30 (£23) plus postage from the Embassy of the Republic of Mali, Avenue Moliere 487, 1050 Brussels, Belgium (00 322 345 7432).

The Foreign Office (0845 850 2829; www.fco.gov.uk) warns: "We advise against all travel to the north and west of Timbuktu, the north and east of the Niger River along the line of Timbuktu, Gao, Ansongo and Labbezanga and towards the western border with Mauritania and eastern borders with Niger and Algeria. This is because of the increased risk of banditry and kidnap in these areas."

For information see the website www.malitourisme.com (in French)

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