Senegalese Pop

Senegal can boast one of the most dynamic musical landscapes in Africa. Not only has it produced probably the best known and most successful African pop star ever in Youssou N'Dour it's also home to robust, homegrown, modern-music genres, a wealth of traditional styles reflecting its six major ethnic groups and arguably the most cutting-edge hip-hop scene to be found on the continent. This is a nation of world-class singers. For power, range, subtlety, expression and originality, the top tier of Senegalese vocalists—N'Dour, Baaba Maal, Omar Pene, Thione Seck and Ismael Lo—can stand shoulder to shoulder with the best singers of any country in the world.

Such pop music vitality is particularly surprising when you consider that Senegal got a late start in developing its own modern music. Senegal endured an especially long and intense experience of European intervention—from early Portuguese explorers and slavers to French colonizers who actually recruited a Senegalese regiment to fight on French soil during World War II. Holding out the prize of French citizenship, colonial education in Senegal strongly encouraged citizens to aspire to leave their roots behind and adapt a foreign identity. This was reflected in the urban music scene right up to the 1970s. Senegalese bands played rock, funk, popular French songs and especially Afro-Cuban music. A rich world of tradition continued to thrive beyond the city limits, but it was slow to find expression in the city. When independence movements swept Africa in the early '60s, neighboring countries moved quickly to develop local music styles.

The first hint of this process came in 1970 with the formation of two highly influential groups, Orchestra Baobab and Xalam. Baobab was essentially a salsa outfit, but its Dakar-based musicians hailed from Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Mali and Morocco and the band's music subtly incorporated a variety of traditional elements. Xalam aimed at fusing roots music with jazz-rock, a path that led the group to relocate to Paris in 1973. The watershed moment in Senegalese pop came later in the decade with the emergence of mbalax, a highly percussive, distinctly local pop style that quickly swept all competition aside. Mbalax remains the dominant force in the nation's music to this day.

Mbalax championed the traditions of Senegal's Wolof majority population, but it was not the only overtly ethnic pop to emerge in the '70s. By the end of the decade, the largely Mandinka Cassamance region of southern Senegal had produced a sensationally popular group, Toure Kunda (literally "family of elephants"). Fronted by three talented and charismatic brothers, Toure Kunda produced an innovative blend of Mande music, mbalax, reggae and original Afropop that proved hugely successful in France. In retrospect, one could argue that Toure Kunda spearheaded the coming world-music movement in Europe.

The '80s saw a proliferation of new acts in Senegal. In addition to mbalax juggernauts like Super Diamono and Thione Seck, an Orchestra Baobab veteran who formed Le Raam Daan, new sounds came to the fore. Griots—hereditary praise musicians—began recording popular cassettes, backed by drum machines and keyboards, mixed in with traditional lutes, harps and percussion. Senegal's most important producer, Ibrahima Sylla, set up shop in Paris and began grooming musicians from all over West Africa to make more elaborately produced music that would preserve ethnic and local identity but leverage glossy production values to appeal to a sophisticated Western public. Among Sylla's many early successes was Super Diamono alumnus Ismael Lô, who developed a gentle troubadour persona, playing harmonica and picking an acoustic guitar like Bob Dylan and ranging stylistically from Antillean beats to blues ballads and mbalax.

A young, noble-born singer from the northern Senegalese town of Podor added a bold new stroke to the country's evolving musical tapestry. Baaba Maal was a renaissance man—singer, dancer, poet and composer. He led a versatile band, Dande Lenol, but also performed soulful guitar and vocal duos with his lifelong friend Mansour Seck, a blind griot with whom Maal had traveled the Senegal River collecting folkloric music. He, too, joined forces with Sylla to produce landmark electric pop recordings. In 1989, N'Dour toured and recorded with Peter Gabriel. Before long, N'Dour had his own studio (Xipi) and record label (Jololi) in Dakar, and began producing local artists at levels of production that would have been unimaginable a decade earlier.

In the '90s, Maal and N'Dour drove the development of Senegalese pop in a variety of ways, starting with the rising production standards of their own recordings. N'Dour produced the first major release for Cheikh Lo, whose blend of acoustic mbalax, rumba, salsa and religious folklore proved a revelation and quickly launched him to international fame. Lo is a Baye Fall, an adherent of a dreadlocked fraternity of mystic African Muslims, and he made his faith a central theme in his art. Meanwhile, Maal's 1994 release Firin' in Fouta featured the debut of two rappers from the group Positive Black Soul. PBS proved the leading edge of a huge wave of Senegalese hip-hop that by the turn of the century would run the gamut from political rabblerousing and smutty underground rap to visionary inspirational fare that imagined a bright future fueled by optimism, youth and clean living.

Recent years have also seen the rise of the singer-songwriter, artists who don't limit themselves to dance music, traditional roots or large bands. Wassis Diop, Daby Toure and Daby Baldy are all such artists, and all have found appreciative audiences in Europe, especially France.
With so much new music emerging, the time was right for revivals. In the late '90s, Sylla brought together great surviving singers from the Senegalese-salsa era and paired them with session musicians in New York under the name Africando. The first two Africando releases proved successful worldwide, and Sylla has continued the franchise with a constantly evolving lineup of singers and players. In 2001, London producer Nick Gold of Buena Vista Social Club fame, managed to reunite Orchestra Baobab, and although some of the players had left music aside for a decade or more, the band came together beautifully and began recording new work.
Through it all, mbalax remains the driving force in Senegalese pop. Dakar's live scene is among the best to be found in any African city, with major stars running their own nightclubs with first-rate sound systems and hot new acts hitting the scene all the time. —Banning Eyre (Afropop Worldwide)