2023-05-12 18:00:24
“I have a weird face, I know that. Maybe it’s my eyes, she says, mechanically stirring the Coke that fills her glass. We would not have said “weird”, but rather “not trivial”. Between her much larger than average figure, her red braids and the tons of necklaces that dot her chest, Fatoumata Diawara has something of a fantastic character.
Her almond-shaped eyes, the 41-year-old Malian, who practices multiple arts – she is a dancer, actress, musician and singer at the same time – half-closed them that day, while aperitif time just rang. Snuggled up in a big white down jacket despite the mild spring weather, she struggles with sleep after a sleepless night on the plane: she’s just returned from a three-week tour of the United States. “Los Angeles, Phoenix, Portland… We were eagerly awaited”she lists, delighted with the first scenes performed with her latest album, My Londonreleased on Friday May 12 by Wagram Music (she will also give a concert at the Salle Pleyel, in Paris, on May 24).
To keep her awake, her manager orders soda after soda. “It keeps her going”he breathes. “I never drink alcohol, not a drop, otherwise I’ll be ruined. Alcohol, it breaks me, I fall asleep illico “, explains Fatoumata Diawara. Too bad for us, who fantasized about a small glass of rosé in the middle of work.
She made an appointment at Petit Poucet, place de Clichy, in the 17e capital district. The name of this brewery goes well with this artist with a mystical universe. And then, she knows this noisy corner of the north of Paris like the back of her hand, where she lived for years before establishing her base camp on the shores of Lake Como, in Italy, with her husband and two children.
In the neighborhood, he is often questioned. Because of his eyes et of his face “weird”therefore, believes the singer, who then explains spending her time singing loudly in the street. “I sing all the time, I have no other choice to survive”, she says in a voice as soft as it can be powerful and energetic during her walks on the Parisian asphalt. We then risk putting forward this hypothesis: it is perhaps rather his tone that pushes passers-by to question him.
She shrugs. “Malians hail me, but none of them know my first name”, laughs the one who calls herself “Fatou”. In her country of origin as everywhere in West Africa, she is known by another first name: she is forever called Sia. The fault of a legendary female character that she played in a film in 2001: Sia, the python’s dream.
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