Amadou & Mariam kicked off their North American tour last night with a performance at Chicago's Park West, creating music that the Chicago Tribune's Greg Kot, in his "Turn It Up" blog, describes as "a steaming cauldron of Mali funk ‘n’ roll that the couple stirred, adding ingredients from countless cultures as needed. They knew when to bring it to a boil and when to let it simmer." It was enough to get the audience going from the start, and as the night went on, the crowd's dancing fervor only increased, with Amadou & Mariam's "elastic songs stretching further into a zone where the line between dance and trance blurred."

To explain the dancefloor frenzy and the group's recent rise to global success, Kot credits the duo's indelible hooks—"Their songs have them in abundance"—especially those from their latest Because/Nonesuch release, Welcome to Mali. Performed live, those songs proved themselves to be "a marriage of Western bravado and West African agility."

Amadou's guitar playing, which Kot recently described as emanating "mind-altering eloquence," were a focal point of last night's concert as well. His "skeletal riffs inevitably set the course of each song," reads the review, "and he and his wife traded call-and-response vocals with their backing singers. Their voices are strong, pliant instruments, their music upbeat and celebratory."

Kot goes on to describe the greater depth behind these celebratory tunes, concluding that in the end, "their music bridging cultures, sounds and language with a grace rarely seen on a North American stage."

Read the complete concert review at leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com.

Amadou & Mariam's North American tour continues with two stops in Canada in the coming days: tomorrow night at the Phoenix Concert Theatre in Toronto and Friday at the Metropolis in Montreal. For upcoming dates, visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.