The Color of Mali, The Color of Life

Malian actress and singer Fatoumata Diawara is one of the standard-bearers of modern African music. Her 2011 debut album Fatou brought the Malian actress, singer and guitarist to the global stage and her most recent album, Fenfo (which translates as “Something to Say”) was released in 2018 and to great international acclaim.

For Fatouma the color red symbolises energy, love, the earth and all of life and as she explains: ''All those associations make me think of my homeland, because it was there that I first discovered their meaning.''

Love is the most important feeling in the whole world. Love is what makes us human, makes us family, makes us happy. When you say red, you say yes to life. 

There are two things that remind us that we are all equal in this world; one is the heartbeat (also represented by red colour). Life starts with a heartbeat. The other is the blood in our veins. 

I read once that we are all different expressions of the same colour and I love to think that nobody is really that different from each other.  No matter their roots and origins, skin colour or religion, at the end of the day we all have the same colour running through our veins, and this is red.