Voices United for Mali: ‘Mali-ko’

There’s a major crisis in Mali right now — and many of its best-known musicians have banded together to respond. Days before her recent appearance at globalFEST in New York City, the Malian singer, actress and dancer Fatoumata Diawara returned from her country’s capital city, Bamako. She had just completed her urgent mission: to gather together as many prominent Malian singers and musicians as she could to speak up about the violence and destruction in the country’s vast north that threatens not just a trembling Mali, but much of the wider region as well.