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"An album is a wall to penetrate," says Malian singer Rokia Traoré, immediately establishing herself as a marketing exec's nightmare. The wall called Bowmboï, Traoré's third CD, is built from sounds unfamiliar to Western ears and lyrics sung only in her native Bamana, even though she's also proficient in English, French, German and Italian. "I asked myself if it wouldn't be better to do something easier," she says. "Maybe if you do something a little pop, it's easier to promote. I had a choice. But I prefer this." Thank goodness. Bowmboï is mesmerizing, casting its spell with virtuoso vocals, rich textures and startling diversity. If her 2000 album Wanita was her breakthrough, winning Traoré worldwide acclaim as a rising star, then Bowmboï is a stamp of the 29-year-old's growing musical authority.

Traoré's sound may be exotic, ethereal, otherworldly — all words trotted out to praise the good in the impossibly broad "world-music" genre — but her themes are universal. Déli is a meditation on friendship. The title track — named for a lullaby Traoré's mother sang to her — wrestles with child poverty. She even deals with politics, but insists she could never work in that language. She thinks of the complexity of Mali's relations with the International Monetary Fund as well as her country's cotton farmers and how they suffer because Western nations subsidize their own. Such topics "are not poetic," she says. "I may be thinking about the situation between developed countries and undeveloped countries, but you will never hear those words in my songs." So, on Kèlè Mandi, whose haunting admonitions make it a highlight, Traoré just sings about human interaction: "Give me a bit of what you are/ But do it with gentleness and tolerance."

Traoré's spare arrangements use a variety of instruments, including a calabash harp called the bolon, an African lute called the n'goni and, on two tracks, the strings of San Francisco's acclaimed Kronos Quartet. But the songs are really designed to showcase the range of moods and colors in Traoré's own voice. On Mariama, a stirring call-and-response duet with veteran Ousmane Sacko, she provides the velvety counterpoint to his rough edges. On Manian, a searching song about poverty in which she asks, "What have I done to deserve such a life/ Who have I offended in heaven?", she begins with a matter-of-fact resignation familiar to anyone who has spent time in Africa, then unleashes a spellbinding mix of urgent chants, mournful cadenzas and more quiet testimony.

She often sings as the outsider, a role she has played for most of her life. A diplomat's daughter, Traoré spent chunks of her childhood in Algeria, Belgium and Saudi Arabia. As a musician, she's had to fight for respect, since she was not born into the caste of griots, Mali's musician-bards. It's been hard "to make people accept you for who you are," she says. The outsider's refrain is a cry for acceptance, and she sings one now for developing nations like Mali, whose needs are often overlooked. "In Africa, we are not powerful," she says. "This music is just to say: we are not O.K. But — there is always a message of hope." Her most spirited missive is Niènafîng, a drum-driven salute to her homeland. "Who dares say that Mali has nothing to offer?" she demands. After listening to Bowmboï, nobody would dare.

• JEFF CHU
• Rokia Traoré's sublime new album is universally appealing