Amadou Bagayoko: World Cup hit singer died in Mali

The “time that something turns” musician Amadou Bagayoko (1954-2025) is dead. He died on April 4 at the age of 70 from an illness that is not known. The funeral service took place in his home country on April 6th.

The singer from Mali has been on stage as a duo Amadou & Mariam together with his wife Mariam (66) for decades. The two had met in the 1970s at the Institute for Young Blind, the first modern blind school in Mali. They became known as “the blind couple of Mali”. Bagayoko was already born with gray star and fully blindly blindly blindly as a teenager. He also found it in music: he played flute, harmonica and guitar.

The duo connected the sounds of the West African homeland with rock and pop. The two had their international breakthrough around 20 years ago with their album “Dimanche à Bamako”. The duo was finally famous for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, to which they together with Herbert Grönemeyer (68) the official FIFA song “time that something revolves” (in the English-language version: “Celebrate the Day”).

Two years later, they released their album “Welcome to Mali”, for which they received a Grammy nomination in the “World Music” category. In 2009 the couple appeared as a opening act of Coldplay, in 2010 they sang at the opening concert for the World Cup in Johannesburg.

The grief for Bagayoko is great in his homeland of Mali. Thousands of people said goodbye to him in the capital. Several malic artists had participated in the ceremony before burial. The responsible minister therefore paid tribute to the merits of the musician about the Malian culture and the entire cultural world.