Wassoulou

Wassoulou is a style of West African popular music from the Wassoulou region where Mali, Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire meet. It is built on pentatonic melodies carried by the kamale ngoni, a lute-harp developed from hunters' instruments, alongside djembe, karinyan scraper and call-and-response singing. The style is defined above all by its women singers, whose songs address marriage, polygamy, fertility and women's labour with unusual directness. Rising from regional cassette culture in the 1980s, Wassoulou produced in *Oumou Sangaré* one of Africa's biggest-selling vocalists and remains a central strand of Malian popular music.