“T he Grand Ball of Bamako,” as organisers tagged the Saturday evening soiree at the Hotel de l’Amitié in the Malian capital, was meant to provide one of the west African country’s biggest headlines last weekend. Many sponsors including Orange Mali , the local subsidiary of the French telecoms company, had bankrolled the show, which organisers hoped would demonstrate Mali’s capacity to put on big cultural events in the teeth of a security crisis raging on multiple fronts. On the eve of the concert, a convoy of cars picked up the main attraction, Grammy award-winning Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, from the Modibo Keita international airport. In the end though, N’Dour, one of the continent’s most famous voices, did not get to perform. Halfway into the concert, guests stood up from the tables draped in white and left the venue, after news reached organisers that the ruling junta had imposed a 72-hour citywide curfew.…