Mamani Keïta's life story reads like a novel: she grew up in Bamako without a father, lost her mother when she was only thirteen years old and was eventually discovered by Salif Keita who took her to Paris. An underage Mamani stayed behind in the French capital and managed to survive in illegality for years without knowing a word of French. After the birth of her daughter she decided enough was enough and slowly started crawling out of the hole she'd gotten herself into. Several years down the line 'Gagner L'Argent Français' is Keïta's third album to date and we have little doubt she knows what she's talking about with that title. Mamani walks a musical line that holds the middle between the traditional music from her motherland Mali and Western pop and rock, with some ambient-dub (the wonderful 'Massigui') and afrobeat ('Konia' featuring Adama Coulibaly) thrown in for good measure. The result is a state-of-the-art Euro-African album that didn't leave us untouched.