Salif Keïta (IPA: [salif keɪta]) (born August 25, 1949) is an afro-pop singer-songwriter from Mali. He is unique not only because of his reputation as the "Golden Voice of Africa" but because he has albinism.
Keita was born in the village of Djoliba. He was cast out by his family and ostracized by the community because of his albinism, a sign of bad luck in Mandinka culture. He left Djoliba for Bamako in 1967, where he joined the government sponsored Super Rail Band de Bamako. In 1973 Keita joined the group, Les Ambassadeurs. Keita and Les Ambassadeurs fled political unrest in Mali during the mid-1970s for Abidjan, Ivory Coast, and subsequently changed the group's name to "Les Ambassadeurs Internationaux". The reputation of Les Ambassadeurs Internationaux rose to the international level in the 1970s, and in 1977 Keita received a National Order award from the president of Guinea, Sékou Touré.
He is the adoptive father of niece Paralympian athlete Nantenin Keita.
Salif Keïta Traoré (born 8 December 1946), known as Keita, is a Malian retired footballer who played as a striker.
Keita was born in Bamako, playing in his country for AS Real Bamako and Stade Malien. With the former, which he represented in two different spells, he was always crowned top division champion.
In 1967, 20-year-old Keita left for France to join AS Saint-Étienne, where he won three consecutive Ligue 1 titles, including the double in 1968 and 1970. In his last two seasons with Les Verts combined, he scored an astonishing 71 league goals – 42 alone in the 1970–71 campaign – but the club failed to win any silverware; in 1970, he was voted African Footballer of the Year.
Keita joined fellow league side Olympique de Marseille in the 1972 summer. After the club tried to force him to assume French nationality, he opposed, leaving in the ensuing off-season for Valencia CF in Spain.
Spanish newspapers were accused of racism when one headline read El Valencia va a por alemanes y vuelve con un negro ("Valencia goes out to buy Germans and comes back with a black man"), but he was always loved during his spell at the club, netting in his debut with the Che, a 2–1 La Liga home win against Real Oviedo, and being eventually nicknamed La perla negra de Malí (The black pearl of Mali); he complained, however, that he was constantly played out of position.
Salif Keïta (born 19 October 1975 in Dakar) is a Senegalese professional footballer who currently plays for AS Douanes.
Salif may refr to:
Salif Fofana better known by the mononym Salif (born Salif Wonka 1982), is a French rapper based in Boulogne-Billancourt of Malian and Guadeloupean origin. His musical career began at the age of thirteen when he and EXS formed the rap duo Nysay in 1995. Salif released his first solo album, Tous Ensemble – Chacun Pour Soi, in 2001. To date he has released four studio albums, all of which have entered the Top 75 of the French albums chart. His most commercially successful album so far was Curriculum Vital, which reached a peak position of #9 in the French chart in October 2009.