Issa Bagayogo

Biography

By rights, Issa Bagayogo should never have become a musician. Born in 1961 to a farming family in Korin, a poor village 30 miles from the nearest town in southern Mali, his fate seemed to be to work the farm his father worked with his four wives and 14 other childen. But Bagayogo was drawn to music, first playing the daro, a bell that keeps farm workers laboring. From there, at ag 12, he took up the six-string young man's harp, or kamele n'goni, a common instrument throughout th... Read more