Amadou Traoré, who used the stage name Amadou Balaké, was a popular singer and bandleader from Burkina Faso who was born in 1944 in Ouahigouya. He began his professional music career in 1962 and performed with various orchestras across West Africa, including ensembles in Bamako, Abidjan, and Conakry. His breakthrough occurred when he joined the group Harmonie Voltaïque in Ouagadougou and recorded the hit song “Balaké”. This track, which means porcupine in Mandinka, led him to adopt his stage name. He later performed as the vocalist for the Super Volta orchestra and formed the ensemble Amadou Balaké and the 5 Consuls in 1970. He recorded his first solo album, Traoré Amadou dit Ballaké et ses Dieux (1975), in the mid-1970s. In 1979, he traveled to New York with Laba Sosseh and recorded the albums Amadou Balaké à New York (1979) and Afro-Charanga (1981). His single “Taximan n'est pas gentil” earned him a gold record in Côte d'Ivoire in 1982. Balaké joined the Senegalese salsa group Africando in 2000 as a guest vocalist and later became an official member, appearing on albums including Mandali (2000) and Ketukuba (2006). His final recordings were released on the posthumous album In Conclusion (2015). Balaké died in 2014 in Ouagadougou.
