‘The album is a love letter to men’: meet feminist supergroup Les Amazones d’Afrique

A collective of female stars including Angélique Kidjo, Mariam Doumbia and Nneka is singing out against gender inequality in west Africa over a soundtrack of funk, blues and dub
Les Amazones d’Afrique: left to right, Mariam Koné, Nneka, Mouneissa Tandina, Rokia Koné, Mariam Doumbia, Pamela Badjogo, Kandia Kouyaté and Mamani Keïta. Photograph: Tiago Augusto

‘We are sick of seeing women suffer because of violence,” says Pamela Badjogo, Afro-jazz and blues singer. “In the family, in the war zones. We want it to stop.”
Badjogo is a member of the supergroup Les Amazones d’Afrique, an all-female collective of west African musicians campaigning for gender equality. It might seem a worthy premise on which to build a powerful creative expression but their album République Amazone blends ancient rhythms seamlessly over funk and blues with dabs of dub. Tracks are sang intermittently in English, French and Mandinka, and tackle love, oppression and female empowerment. These 12 musicians and singers, among them Grammy-winning Angélique Kidjo, Mariam Doumbia of the legendary duo Amadou and Mariam, and international popstar Nneka, believe music can trigger change and be a weapon to address the systematic disempowerment of women across Africa.

The project itself began with just three Malian singers: Oumou Sangaré, Mamani Keïta and Doumbia. These towering, glamorous presences, well-known on the world music scene, spent time with Valerie Malot (of French music agency 3D Family) in Bamako, the capital of Mali, in 2014. She became their de facto manager. “I saw how beautiful their lives were – with their perfume, fashion, music and divination, and I found myself connecting more and more with them,” says Malot. The conversations they had around gender led to some big realisations. “What we found out was that female repression in the continent and in the world, is something that touches every woman. It’s not a question of colour, or culture. It’s something generic. All women can relate to it.”
While Sangaré (who would decide not to continue working on the project) had experienced polygamy and forced marriage, Keïta had spent many years in Paris struggling as a female musician. After Malot proposed the idea, they decided to come together to help support and raise money for the Panzi Foundation, which has treated more than 85,000 girls and women with gynaecological injuries in the Democratic Republic of Congo, over half of whom were survivors of sexual violence.

Womanism

Unification is a key cornerstone of Womanist ideology.

Womanism is a social theory based on the racial and gender-based oppression of black women, and other women of marginalized groups. There are varying interpretations of the term "womanist", and efforts to provide a concise and all encompassing definition have only been marginally successful. At its core, womanism hones in on the everyday issues and experiences of both black women and women of marginalized groups, but more importantly, womanism hopes to create an even-leveled environment for all people.[1]

Theory[edit]

Author and poet Alice Walker is credited with coining the term "womanist". From the original introduction of womanism as a social perspective, the term has evolved to envelop varied, and sometimes opposing definitions. Linda Hogan asserts that the term womanist has come to represent a feminist of color, specifically black women, since the Feminist Movement has been experienced by many as intrinsically racist.[2] While feminismcan be alienating to minorities, womanism allows black women to affirm and celebrate their color and culture in a way that feminism does not.[2] In the words of theorists such as Clenora Hudson-Weems and Alicia Boisnier, Black women struggle to identify with traditional feminism, because they do not identify with the issues that feminism typically advocates.[3] Alternatively, Delores Williams, a womanist theologian, associates womanism with the traditions and activism formed from the conditions, events, meanings and values within the African-American community. Williams further asserts that the task of the Womanist theologian is to embody activism by seeking out the voices of the unheard and the experiences of the neglected. She identifies the distinct difference between the experiences of the black woman and the white woman that makes it difficult to identify with feminism. One of the key components of feminism is to end a woman's subjugation to her male counterpart, yet there are other oppressive forces that black women face that takes precedence over the perceived subjugation of the black woman by the black man.[2] This represents an expectation and experience of the black woman as one filled with the quest for knowledge, competence, and authority that surpasses the individual, but encompasses the group.[4] This idea of community rather than individuality is further illustrated by the portrayal of a woman as the embodiment of her environment.[1] In this way womanism does not focus indiscriminately on the experiences of black woman, but desires the reconciliation of all people to their spirituality, their relationships with each other, and their relationship with nature. It characterizes women as willful and capable thereby contrasting the image of a women as subservient and inferior.[5] In doing so, womanism empowers women, and challenges them to break from the traditional definition of womanhood.