While the Bamana have a tradition of griot performing at weddings, members of the nobility such as Rokia are discouraged from performing as musicians. Rokia attended lycee in Mali while her father was stationed in Brussels and started performing publicly as a university student in Bamako. Unusually for a female musician in Africa, Rokia plays acoustic guitar as well as sings, and she uses vocal harmonies in her arrangements which are rare in Malian music. In 1997, she linked with Mali musician Ali Farka Toure which raised her profile. She won an Radio France Internationale prize as "African Discovery" of 1997, an honor previously won by Mali's Habib Koite in 1993. As well as guitar she plays ngoni (lute) and balafon
Her first album Mouneissa (Label Bleu), released in late 1997 in Mali and September 1, 1998 in Europe, was acclaimed for its fresh treatment and unqualifiable combinations of several Malian music traditions such as her use of the ngoni and the balafon. It sold over 40,000 copies in Europe.
On July 11, 2000, her second album Wanita was released. Traore wrote and arranged the entire album. The album was widely acclaimed with The New York Times nominating it as one of its critics' albums of the year.
Her 2003 album Bowmboi has two tracks recorded with the Kronos Quartet but still sung in the Bamana language, and was awarded the prestigious BBC 3 World Music Award. As of 2005, she has been nominated three times for this award. She played at WOMAD in 2004 and completed her first tour of North America in the same year.
In 2005 she performed at the "Africa Live" festival, held in Dakar (Senegal) on 12 and 13 March 2005, where, several great names of African music were present, including: Malians Ali Farka Toure, Salif Keita, Oumou Sangare, Tinariwen, Tiken Jah Fakoly of Cote d'Ivoire, Cameronian Manu Dibango, Algerian Khaled, Senegalese Didier Awadi, Baaba Maal and Youssou N'Dour, and the French rapper Joey Starr. These concerts were dedicated to the fight against malaria in Africa.
In 2005 she also performed at the Youssou N'dour and Friends concert in Geneva, which was also a supporting gala against malaria, with Peter Gabriel, Amadou and Mariam, Gilberto Gil, Tiken Jah Fakoly and Neneh Cherry.
In December 2006 Peter Sellars' New Crowned Hope festival, which is part of the City of Vienna's celebrations commemorating Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birthday 250 years ago, saw the world premiere of Wati, a performance by Rokia Traore and the Klangforum Wien.
On May 6, 2008, her latest album, "Tchamantche", was released.
Rokia was the winner of the Best Artist category in the inaugural Songlines Music Awards (2009) - announced May 1, 2009 - the new 'world music' awards organised by the UK-based magazine, Songlines.
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