Life is good

 La vie est belle, life is good. This might be the slogan of Mali's famous blind musical couple, Amadou & Mariam.They met at the Bamako Blind Institute, where they both played in the house orchestra, the Eclipse Orchestra.

Sharing the faith of falling blind during their childhood, they stayed together, married in 1980 and since 1989, they recorded music together. On their first abums, Amadou plays guitar, and either Mariam or Amadou signed for the vocals. After some years, international success came with working with names such as Manu Chao, Santigold, Damon Albarn and others.

After 5 acoustic albums, 10 international albums and various compilations and live recordings, it was time to compile nearly 35 years of music or more, with a new album Best Of, with 3 new tracks. The physical album comes as a double vinyl, or a collector double CD. The second CD of the collector double CD contains a live recording made in total darkness, hence the name Eclipse, recorded in 2012.

A Recent Example: Amadou & Mariam's Welcome to Mali

It has been a while, I know. I am still not very sure that these promotional album stickers are indeed a passionate subject to have a blog about. I am afraid that the number of blog views reinforces this doubt, actually nobody is taking a look at this blog.

Anyaway, I take the latest album by Malian star blind couple Amadou & Mariam as a example. Here, you can see a sticker that is put on without much love, it is not at all put on straight, it is covering part of the art work of the album, and the typography, although stylish, turns out to be less fortunate: the visibility of the names of the featured artists (Damon Albarn, Tiken Jah Fakoly, Keziah Jones, K'Naan, M, and Juan Rozoff) is far from optimal.

The purpose of this sticker:

• It is indicating that it is a new album
  
• It mentions featured artists that are well-known
  
• It mentions two songs that are put forward, i.e. Sabali and Masiteladi
  
• It shows the logo of radio station France Inter (in some way involved in the promotion of this album)

But what a beauty when opening the gatefold CD, the inlay opens up as a mini-poster, it is too big for my A4 scanner...