Mbalax

The crack of polyrhythmic drumming, the feathery, off-beat strum of an electric guitar, a groove that pounces and then charges ahead panting, egged on by punchy keyboard or brass section hits, and a voice so strong and clear that it rides serenely above the musical tempest—that's mbalax, the most popular modern genre of music in Senegal.

Mbalax was born in the 1970s when two cultural worlds collided. One was the domain of popular musicians in the capital, Dakar, a port city known for its cosmopolitan style and, musically, for its appropriations of Afro-Cuban music, jazz, funk, rock and French pop. The other force was a welling resurgence of African traditional culture that included Wolof sabar drummers and hurricane-throated praise singers whose songs carried the wisdom and heroic deeds of bygone ages. During the 1960s Senegal's first president, Leopold Senghor, worked hard to shake off a national obsession with foreign things and to revitalize neglected indigenous culture, all under the banner of "negritude," or black identity. In Senghor's Senegal, it was inevitable that salsa and sabar would come together, and when they did the result was mbalax.

The Wolof are Senegal's largest ethnic group, and among them are a hereditary caste of musicians known generally as griots, but specifically as géwël. The griots of Mande music (jalis or djelis) have gained world renown, and their fame has created an misimpression that griots sing and play melodic instruments like the kora (harp) and balafon (wooden xylophone), but never play percussion instruments. This is not the case. The Wolof géwël are masters of the sabar, a tall, upright drum played with one bare hand and one small stick, which produces the instrument's distinctive crack. The rhythmic phrases, or bàkks, played by sabar drummers originate from imitations of spoken words. In recent times, bàkks have evolved on their own to create a lively, purely rhythmic language that animates social gatherings not only in Senegal but also in many parts of West Africa. Today, even in places where not a word of Wolof is spoken, you can go to a party and find a sabar ensemble holding forth for recreational dancers.

It is difficult to pin down the exact moment when mbalax came into being. Most likely it occurred within a popular, mid-'70s Dakar outfit called Étoile de Dakar, the band that gave a teenaged singer named Youssou N'Dour his start. N'Dour quickly became the most popular singer in the country, and his rise directly parallels that of mbalax. Étoile de Dakar played all the popular styles of their day, but in the spirit of "negritude" the band introduced traditional sabar drums and other indigenous sounds. Electric instruments began adapting the rhythms that drums would perform in a sabar ensemble. Typically, the rhythm guitar took the part of the time keeper in the ensemble, the mbung-mbung drum—hence the emerging new genre's name, mbalax.

In N'Dour's wake, many talented young singers embraced mbalax. Thione Seck, a singing griot himself and a veteran of the pan-African salsa outfit Orchestra Baobab, pulled together a sensational band called Le Raam Daan, specializing in mbalax pur et dur (pure and strong). Super Diamono, another extremely popular act, took a more progressive approach, fusing mbalax with rock and jazz. Eventually, the group's lead singer, Omar Pene, emerged as a superstar under his own name while guitarist Lamine Faye split off to form his own band, Lemzo Diamono.

By the '90s, virtually any singer in any genre had to have at least a few mbalax numbers. The style had crystallized as a sound unto itself, and although artists would continue to innovate, the Senegalese public now expected a certain consistency among mbalax artists. Up to the present, a stream of young mbalax singers continues to flood the airwaves and animate Dakar's active live scene. Alioune Mbaye, Fallou Dieng and Abdou Guitte Seck are just a few of them, all beloved in Senegal, though little known internationally. Despite the rise of other styles, notably Senegalese hip hop, mbalax remains on top, with solid support from fans young and old. The genre's supremacy shows no sign of ebbing, changing times notwithstanding. —Banning Eyre Courtesy Afropop Worldwide: