Introducing a fresh new talent with a unique sound, a bagful of beautiful self-penned songs and a tumultuous life story behind her. Performing at Carnegie Hall on the eve of Lewisburg Chocolate Fesival (Friday, April 10th), Fatoumata Diawara delivers jazz and funk into an exquisitely sparse contemporary folk sound. Her debut album, ‘Fatou’, was released on World Circuit on September 19, 2011.

Fatoumata is tall, superbly poised and elegant, with an iridescent smile. She refracts the rocking rhythms and plaintive melodies of her ancestral Wassoulou tradition through an instinctive pop sensibility. At the centre of the music is Fatou’s warm, affecting voice, spare, rhythmical guitar playing and gorgeously melodic songs that draw powerfully on her own often troubled experience.

Now based in Paris, and still only 29, Fatou has had a life covering a whole gamut of contemporary African experience: fighting parental opposition to her artistic ambitions and the cultural prejudice faced by women throughout Africa, winning success as an actress in film and theatre, before finding her feet in the medium she was always destined to make her own: music.

Show starts at 7:30pm Purchase tickets at carnegiehallwv.org or call 304-645-7917

For more info, visit fatoumatadiawara.fr

– LBSPY, April 2015