“Cette album porte sa mémoire et la lumière qu’il a laissée en moi.”
“This album carries his memory and the light he left within me”.
Fatoumata Diawara returns with a lush and deeply personal new album, Massa, released June 5, on the NØ FØRMAT! label and produced under the co-artistic direction of French musician and artist Matthieu Chedid (M-). If her previous album, London Ko, revealed an artist eager to expand the sonic possibilities of contemporary Malian music, Massa feels less like expansion than consolidation—the sound of an artist becoming fully comfortable in her own authority.
Across twelve songs, Diawara moves through grief, motherhood, memory, faith, resilience, jealousy and survival with a confidence that feels earned rather than asserted. The album unfolds less as a collection of singles than as an emotional landscape, each composition carrying its own weight while contributing to a larger meditation on freedom and self-possession.
One of the first things listeners will notice is the evolution of Diawara’s voice. There is more gravity here than on earlier recordings, more patience in her phrasing, and a willingness to let emotion emerge gradually. Rather than overwhelming the listener, she invites us into her world one song at a time.
The title track, “Massa,” sits near the center of the record and functions almost as its philosophical anchor. Around it, the album moves between confession, remembrance and celebration. The sequencing matters. “Fala” opens the second half of the album like a threshold crossing, carrying themes of loss and resilience that reverberate throughout the record.
“Fala,” meaning “orphan,” is among the album’s most affecting songs. Diawara resists melodrama, allowing the emotional force of the composition to emerge through restraint. Her voice remains the focal point, carrying the weight of absence, longing and endurance. The result is not despair but perseverance.
The single “Djanne” reveals another side of the album’s emotional range. Here, the mood brightens without becoming superficial. The song radiates warmth and confidence, demonstrating Diawara’s gift for balancing accessibility with depth. Like much of Massa, it feels rooted in lived experience rather than performance.
If the album has a moral center, it may well be “Denko,” a deceptively spare meditation on disabled children and the mothers left to carry them when families, workplaces and even marriages turn away. Sung in Bambara, the song delivers one of the album’s most devastating observations: when a child is healthy, he belongs to everyone; when a child is disabled, he becomes the mother’s burden. Diawara never raises her voice. She doesn’t need to. The arrangement remains intimate, allowing the social critique to land with quiet force.
The emotional heart of Massa arrives with “Tati Bakary,” a tribute to Diawara’s late father. Here, the album’s recurring themes of memory and ancestry become intensely personal. Part memorial, part prayer, part conversation across worlds, the song transforms private grief into collective remembrance. Named after her late father, the track unfolds as a living memorial, part blues lament, part ancestral invocation, part private conversation carried into public space. “Dad… wait while I play you some of my little blues,” she pleads, before offering him the sound of the donso ngoni (hunter’s harp), as if music itself could cross the distance between worlds. By naming departed relatives, friends, and musical elders—including Amadou Bagayoko (of Amadou and Mariam) and Toumani Diabaté—Fatoumata transforms personal mourning into collective remembrance. It is not the sound of saying goodbye. It is the sound of refusing disappearance. Music becomes a vessel through which memory continues to live.
Watching Diawara’s “Sigui”-inspired imagery, I am struck by how naturally it sits within the world of Massa. The album repeatedly returns to questions of what survives—parents, children, memory, grief and wisdom passed from one generation to the next. The symbolism of “Sigui,” with its concern for renewal and transmission, feels less like an aesthetic choice than an extension of the album’s central concerns.
Throughout Massa, Diawara’s relationship with the guitar emerges as an essential part of the story. What is most striking is not virtuosity, but purpose. Her playing serves the songs. The guitar functions as a compositional voice, a tool of independence, and increasingly a symbol of artistic freedom.
That freedom became one of the central themes of our conversation.
When I sat down with the Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, actor and multi-instrumentalist, we quickly moved beyond tour dates and festival appearances. Instead, we found ourselves talking about self-reliance, motherhood, discipline, and the long process of becoming the artist she is today.
For Diawara, the guitar is not simply an instrument. It is, in her own words, “part of my freedom.”
Mukwae Wabei Siyolwe: To start, tell me how you came to play guitar. Not many female Malian singers play guitar.
Fatoumata Diawara: Well, at one point, my guitar player gave me a call to say we had to cancel a show because he couldn’t make it. But, if you want to be on stage you have to write your own story. So my relationship with the guitar started in a very hard way. I started to work hard so I could save the two gigs I was supposed to cancel in Paris, and since that time, I see the guitar as part of my freedom, part of my team, truly one of the best keys to my work. And since then, I never gave up on my guitar.
Being able to write anytime you want, you’ve got to have freedom to compose and direct people really fast if you really want them to get them to get your music. So the guitar is really important for me right now. I can’t go on stage without the guitar.
It’s a very powerful symbol, but it’s still miraculous that you have become a master in such a short period of time,which means you had the talent already. You’ve got this creative capacity that whatever you put your hands on,you’re going to do it very, very well because you’re disciplined, and that’s part of what has given you so much success. Where do you get that discipline from?
There are some things in this world that you can’t really explain. Maybe it’s because in my childhood I had been running away from my family, coming to Europe to be mentally free. I always felt different, ever since I was a child, feeling like I could be somebody else. It’s something you cannot properly explain, but some people are born with these energies and are totally determined to want something, and they will work hard to get it right away.
Absolutely. It’s like a curing process. When drying meat, it has to have the time to get that nice flavor from the sun to be marinated.
(Laughter) You have to try. You must be proficient. You have to accept your proficiencies, accept your imperfections and always try to improve yourself, knowing that you won’t get everything right away. You need a lot of patience, and to believe in yourself is really important, especially for women in this industry where we are not respected. So I think playing an instrument can help you to better communicate with other people.
Definitely. They call it a level-up. And as a woman, for sure, it puts you in a whole other league. Remember that it was a woman whose guitar playing started rock ‘n roll—Sister Rosetta Tharpe. It’s so beautiful to see you up there, and wow! There you are doing what women have always been doing. Sister Rosetta was the first to pick up the guitar and electrify it so I’m always so proud when I hear your songs on people‘s playlist. I have a question for you. You have children. How has motherhood affected your calling? Do you take everybody with you?
Yes, yes. My family. I’ve become more sensitive to my children. I feel stronger than before, in the way that I feel I can speak for children. For me, it’s an opportunity. I’m missing my children a lot, but I’m not feeling guilty about what I’m doing because I feel such a connection with the music. It really helps me to live and be at peace in this world, because my sensitivity is so extreme. I’m really sensitive, and this is the only way for me to be a Mom. It helps me to be at peace with other people, even if I’m sometimes very hard on myself, and people around me feel that energy, but that’s the way it is,and I need to work hard to get things, and for sure, my children may not like me sometimes.
That’s one thing that I’m realizing. I can see with time that they are themselves, and that life didn’t bring them in the same way. When I was their age, I was crying already because I felt like an adult. My life was crazy. My father had four women, so I was living with a big family. People were judging me, so I was already traumatized at their age. So I’m not sure if they going to be like me because I’m over protecting them and they grow up with love. They should be different for sure. They suffer a little bit the fact that I’m not home, but I’ve got big support from them. My children love me and I love them and I know that they are missing me and I’m missing them a lot. That’s a complicated problem. Women have to sacrifice because of mother’s wounds. Why do men never have to give up their work to stay with the family? People say I should be there for my children. I am there for them, but in a different way.
I have to exist myself; I have to survive. I also have a child inside of my soul, and I still have to recover this child. I don’t have a memory of being a child in this life. I am also a traumatized person, so it’s complicated, but it’s beautiful because I have a lot of love around me.
You definitely have a supportive team, that’s for sure
On the work side and in the family, I have lots of support.
The children mirror you, and you permit your children to be free. How many cities are you touring this summer? I’m looking at this list, and it’s like what 34?
Yeah, it’s crazy.
And you don’t feel broken at the end of it? You probably need six weeks just to feel alive again. It’s not easy touring.
It’s not easy, but once you get on stage, you forget everything. It’s a special kind of energy…it’s very special.
Yes, and the whole world that you bring us into is really beautiful, the sounds and the visuals and your own presence. What are you looking forward to for this album?
With this album, I just want to reconfirm my vision of Malian music. On the first one I just presented myself voice and guitar; and on the second one I started to lead people to a different sound. It’s like an evolution of what has been done before, confirming who I am through the music, my vision and how I feel the music, my sensibility and my love of my audience. They are dedicated people who accept me as I am. You know even if I come from Mali, this is not the kind of music they were expecting from Mali. I´m trying to do new things. I hope people can feel that energy, the different melodies and vibes.
Also my voice has changed. My father has passed away, and there are many things from the past years, and for whatever reason, I try to tally up the challenges I have been facing. Life is crazy. I like to sing, I like to heal myself, for my soul to accept and believe in myself. It’s a process.
It is a process, and you have to have bon courage. That’s all I have to say. You just can’t be a wimp in life; you have to face your greatest fears on a daily basis and be grateful. I am so grateful for this interview. You are killing it,and I’m here to give you your flowers.
This article was originally published by Afropop Worldwide and is republished here with permission. View the original article.
Afropop Worldwide is the Peabody award-winning public radio program and multimedia platform dedicated to music from Africa and the African diaspora.
