Later he studied art at the Bamako National Institute of the Arts, and puppet theatre at the Institute International de la Marionette in France.
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Born in a family of puppeteers with roots in the Bamana, he began his initiation into the of puppet and masquerade figures at the age of ten as an apprentice to his father.
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In 1980 he formed his own puppet company, the Sogolon Puppet Troupe, and has since become the leading custodian of the Bambara puppetry tradition, the oldest and richest of Africa’s surviving puppetry traditions.