It's clearer in the dark - Amadou and Mariam

The shows present an unusual opportunity to experience their fiery African rock from the perspective of its creators. Both lost their sight as children, Amadou Bagayoko from a congenital cataract when he was 16, and Mariam Doumbia when she contracted measles at just five. "It's always like this for us but for everyone else it's a new way of listening to music," Amadou tells me. "Everything becomes different."

He speaks to me from Paris, in the country where they first reached an audience outside Africa, where Amadou, 57, and Mariam, 53, a married couple, base themselves when touring. They mainly live in Bamako, Mali's capital, and have three children including their son. Samou, who is a rapper.

The concerts, which they are calling Eclipse, were conceived with Marc-Antoine Moreau, the duo's French manager, producer and artistic director since the mid-Nineties. "The people have a very different reaction to the music in a fully dark venue," he says. "In a normal venue you are all together, facing the stage - it's a communal experience. In the dark you are really concentrated on yourself. It's much more personal."

At a regular Amadou and Mariam concert, it's almost impossible not to dance to the snaking guitar, inspired by Jimi Hendrix and James Brown as much as west African sounds, and the rousing, intertwining vocals. Their songs have been euphoric highlights of Damon Albarn's Africa Express happenings, which unite African musicians with British and American stars. However, here, audiences won't be able to let their hair down in the same way. "At this show, the audience and also the musicians are all sitting down," says Amadou. "Everybody is more concentrated and it makes the music more subtle."

The experience will activate other senses too. As a narrator tells the story of the pair's journey, from meeting and joining the band at Bamako's Institute for Young Blind in 1977, to France via the Ivory Coast to become the biggest-selling act from Africa this century, the audience should feel as if they are travelling this long road too.

Changes to the air conditioning will make the room hot and then cold, while surround-sound interludes aim to take you to Africa in your mind.

"People will imagine they're in Mali through the smells, the sounds, the heat and the wind," says Moreau. "There's an incense smell you get in the mornings in Africa, a kind of pollution smell when we take you to the market, and later a perfume created for Amadou and Mariam."

Such an unorthodox performance requires rules: "No phones, no cameras, go to the bathroom before and women, please don't wear big shoes. We give everyone a charter before they go in."

But it's worth the extra effort to hear such a great story. Amadou started his musical career in Les Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako, a collective that also produced the Malian great, Salif Keita. At the same time he was performing with Mariam, just their voices and his guitar. Right from the beginning they were straying from the conventional sounds of their country. "We were always trying to create our own style, whereas a lot of other musicians, when they started, they started with tradition."

They moved south to Abidjan in the Ivory Coast as there was a lack of recording facilities in Mali and released six albums on cassette. The highlights can now be heard on the CD 1990-1995: The Best of the African Years (Because Music). In 1996, they were invited to play as resident musicians for six months in an African restaurant in Paris, where Moreau met them. Three CD albums strengthened their reputation in France before a 2005 collaboration with French superstar Manu Chao, the album Dimanche à Bamako, finally sent them international. It sold half a million copies, an extraordinary number for a world music release.

Since then, they have travelled even further from African traditions to become popular collaborators. They worked with Damon Albarn and Somali-Canadian rapper K'naan on their last album, 2008's Welcome to Mali; they have played with Johnny Marr at Africa Express and David Gilmour at their own London concert in 2009; and they have supported Scissor Sisters and Coldplay at arena shows. Their new album, which is due next year, sounds even more daring, with partnerships with Scissor Sisters singer Jake Shears as well as experimental Americans TV on the Radio, Santigold and Theophilus London. "Musicians who are fans will get in touch with us, and we like to create surprises," says Amadou.

Blindness hasn't been much of a hindrance to their remarkable career. As Amadou says: "We were more determined, and pushed harder because of it. We were encouraged more than anything - people were impressed that blind people could do this much."

Now we can have a temporary taste of the way they have always experienced music. "You will get a much clearer idea of the dark."

Amadou & Mariam: Eclipse, Nov 2-4, York Hall, E2 (020 7638 4141, barbican.org.uk)