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Recently, Amadou and Mariam, a blind musical duo from the West African nation of Mali, played a series of concerts in the absolute darkness. Lee Kumutat was there for In Touch, the long-running Radio 4 programme for blind and partially sighted people. She blogs about the experience ahead of this evening's episode.

When the In Touch producer threw this one my way, I was grateful (nice work) but a little nonplussed. What angle could I take on a concert in the dark, when I can't see anything at a gig anyway? Blindness is funny like that.

And then my natural voyeurism kicked in: it would be interesting to know how sighted Joe Public would react to a totally blacked-out venue. On the heels of voyeurism came scepticism. It probably wouldn't be that dark really, because logistically, how could a hall filled with 700 people be made pitch black?

So, myself and a hapless sighted friend I dragged along as an independent darkness-ometer, went off to Bethnal Green, to have our questions answered.

Amadou and Mariam had said that the point of holding a performance in the dark, was to give the audience the opportunity to hear music as they do. However, apart from switching the lights off, much more had been done to enrich the audience experience.

It was a sensory assault: smells, all of them not entirely pleasant, were pumped in to the hall. The temperature was periodically changed - I have a sneaking suspicion this was to ensure that darkness coupled with hypnotic rhythms didn't cause the audience to drop off. and finally, the space was flooded with surround sound. I found that this made it very difficult to know where one was in relation to others and kept touching shoulders with my friend, just to make sure she was still there. She fulfilled her duty for the night by qualifying the darkness, verifying that she couldn't see her hand in front of her face.

The staff at the venue, who wore night vision goggles during the performance, had some interesting tales to tell about people's reactions to being in the dark, and their sometimes intimate behaviour when they thought nobody could see them.

Speaking with some of my audience mates afterwards, their reaction to the experience was mixed, but mostly positive.

I'm not a proponent of depriving people of a primary sense for the purposes of experiential learning, something which I'm afraid I make abundantly clear in my discussion with Peter White at the end of tonight's piece. But despite my misgivings, and my sense of isolation during the performance, I thoroughly enjoyed the music and the pure talent that is Amadou and Mariam. I just don't think they need to do anything special to help people enjoy their work, except get up there and do what they do best.

Listen to Lee's report or download the programme as a podcast.