This Thursday, May 5th, 2016, Malian singer songwriter Fatoumata Diawara (Fatou) will be performing at 8:00 PM in the concert hall. Fatou, which Telegraph has called “the most beguiling talent to hit the world music scene in some time” and Mojo a new artist with a “spell-weaving voice”, uses elements of jazz, pop, and funk along with her ancestral Wassoulou tradition in her performances Despite opposition from her parents and the expectation of women within her culture, Fatou moved to France to pursue a successful acting career, appearing in feature films like La Genèse and Sia, le rêve du python, working for the internationally renowned street theatre troupe Royal de Luxe, and played a leading role in the musical Kirikou et Karaba. She sang backup for, among others, fellow Malian and label mate Oumou Sangare before she took up guitar and songwriting and debuted as a solo artist. In addition to her own constant global touring, Fatou has performed with renowned artists like Africa Express, AfroCubism, Bobby Womack, Herbie Hancock’s Imagine project, Paul McCartney, and Damon Albarn’s new super-group Rocket Juice and the Moon (with Tony Allen, and Flea). Her work not only reflects a very unique blend of different musical cultures, but also has made powerful sociopolitical commentary and impact. Her lyrics touch on such serious and personal subjects as female circumcision, a woman’s right to choose her spouse, and the songwriter’s own painful experience with the African practice of being raised away from her parents. In Sept of 2013 when all music apart from Quranic chanting was banned by armed jihadi groups in the northern two thirds of Mali, Fatou gathered a group of more than 40 Malian musicians in the face of the Islamist insurgency to record a song calling for peace, an act that earned her the title of one of New African magazine’s hundred most influential Africans of 2013.