Songs of Senegal

“I LOVE the evening in Dakar,” says Youssou N’Dour, glancing out the darkened window of an S.U.V. at the nocturnal crowds streaming into his nightclub, Thiossane, as a warm West African breeze rustles the palms and stirs up the dirt in the unpaved parking lot.

They arrive by foot, car, scooter and battered black-and-yellow taxi, dolled up in their Saturday best for the imminent wee-hours concert by Mr. N’Dour, Africa’s biggest music star. “It’s a city that really comes alive at night.”

Though he has recently returned to Dakar, the Senegalese capital, from a gala in New York City for the international Keep a Child Alive charity — where he sang with Alicia Keys and was honored alongside Bill Clinton and Richard Branson — Mr. N’Dour sounds more like a wistful local kid than a 50-year-old global icon who has won a Grammy Award and was once named one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People.” “I’m still very attached to Dakar,” he goes on, adding that he was born in a working-class neighborhood a few miles from the club. “And the people of Dakar are very attached to my music.”

And how. When he takes the stage, an ecstatic roar explodes, and soon several hundred bodies are dancing madly. With its fast-driving, interweaving traditional sabar drummers — rounded out by guitar, bass, keyboards and a rock drum kit — the opening number, “Less Wakhoul,” is pure mbalax, the propulsive, percussive, melodic pop music that Mr. N’Dour popularized starting in the 1970s and that remains the dominant sound emitted from Senegalese radios.

When the sun dips behind the Atlantic, this gritty concrete metropolis — exhilarating, inventive, emotive — flares into a living jukebox of sounds with few African rivals. And with the imminent arrival of the annual Africa Fête — a music festival from Dec. 12 to 19 featuring the mbalax master Omar Pène and many other top local acts — the city’s tuneful bounty is about to go on even larger and more ebullient display.

It should be a welcome moment in the spotlight for Dakar, one of the globe’s most dynamic yet least touristed music centers. With its bevy of international stars — Mr. N’Dour, the acoustic bard Ismael Lo, the adventurous singer-songwriter Baaba Maal — and an ever-increasing crop of new talents, the Senegalese capital is ripe for discovery.

“Dakar is one of the most musically vibrant cities in Africa,” says Simon Broughton, editor in chief of the Britain-based Songlines magazine, which last year began operating tours of the city and this month features Youssou N’Dour on its cover.

“There’s a large number of clubs,” Mr. Broughton says, “and lots of music as part of the fabric of everyday life.”

Indeed, the musicians and singers of Dakar serve up a remarkably diverse sonic smorgasbord with a rhythm for any mood or occasion. Seeking something mellow? Try Pape et Cheikh, whose Senegalese-folk has won fans like Tracy Chapman, or the group Touré Kunda, whose song “Guerilla Africa” was reworked by Carlos Santana into “Africa Bamba” on his multimillion-selling “Supernatural” album. In an Afrofunk mood? Xalam will show why the Rolling Stones hired them to play on their “Undercover” album.

Distinctive takes on hip-hop, salsa, reggae and jazz are also key parts of Dakar’s extensive repertory — to say nothing of the almighty mbalax, whose popularity carries on through young stars like Titi and Pape Diouf.

“Every two or three years there’s a new generation, both musicians and singers,” Mr. Diouf says. “We’re always trying to find ways to perfect Senegalese music. It’s only natural. There are other sounds, other styles of music, other rhythms.”

ON a Saturday night in late October, I watch as a large group of Senegalese musicians in their 50s and 60s begin setting up drums, saxophones and guitars on the outdoor patio stage of Just4U, one of the city’s live music temples.

Expectation is palpable in the crowd — young Senegalese professionals and 30-something Western expatriates — and for good reason: the band, Orchestra Baobab, is a local legend. And their rise, fall and rebirth is one of the most remarkable stories in Senegalese music and a window into the evolution of the country’s characteristic sounds.

Back in 1970, recalls one of its guitarists, Lafti Benjeloun, as we watch fans arrive, the musicians were recruited by a new Dakar night spot called Club Baobab — “the most beautiful club in West Africa” — which was frequented by members of the governmental and social upper crust.

Musically, the band latched on to the craze for Afro-Cuban music sweeping the region. It was a natural fit. Conjured from “a brew of African percussion and Western influences, mainly Spanish,” as Mr. Benjeloun puts it, the music coming out of Havana instantly caught on with West Africans, who “naturally recognized themselves in the rhythms.”

Orchestra Baobab stirred in other influences — Gypsy jazz licks, Arabo-Andalusian strumming, Malian rhythms — and produced some hugely successful recordings; soon it was the toast of the nation. But a growing tide of Senegalese cultural pride unleashed by the country’s independence from France in 1960 eventually helped create mbalax mania and forced foreign sounds out of favor. By 1985 Orchestra Baobab had dissolved.

Then, 16 years later, came a storybook twist. Nick Gold, a fan and founder of Britain-based World Circuit Records (home of Buena Vista Social Club) helped persuade the band to reunite. Mr. Gold resurrected their career, organizing a 2001 reunion concert in London and releasing the band’s first new albums in decades. Within a few years, the band was performing on David Letterman and starring in a VH1 special.

Jamming onstage, the graying bandmates don’t seem to have slowed at all. As I sip a huge bottle of local Gazelle beer under the patio’s bamboo roof, the grooves feel as tropical as the night air: warm, up-tempo, lushly orchestrated, full of rich horn riffs and rock-steady guitar strumming.

Before long, bodies are swaying and dancing. A Senegalese guy in Malcolm X glasses and impeccable threads twirls his date, a lithe Senegalese girl in skintight black pants. Matronly women in colorful native dresses jiggle and laugh. The scene is proof of something Mr. Benjeloun said to me with a chuckle before the set: “Wine gets better with age, and so do musicians.”

The same week, another pioneer strides onto Just4U’s outdoor stage: the hip-hop star Awadi. Twenty years ago, the dreadlocked wordsmith more or less created Senegalese hip-hop when he and Doug E. Tee (now called Duggy-T) founded Positive Black Soul. The duo quickly went on to become the nation’s most successful hip-hop act, signing with major labels, touring internationally and collaborating with boldface rap names like KRS-One.

Positive Black Soul’s success gave birth to an exploding Senegalese hip-hop scene, whose influence in Africa is now way out of proportion to the country’s small size. With their socially conscious lyrics, top Senegalese groups like Daara J and Pee Froiss have found audiences well beyond their homeland. In the words of Benn Loxo du Taccu, a top English-language blog about Senegalese music: “This little country in West Africa probably has the most developed rap concert and recording scene anywhere on the continent.”

Dressed in a camouflage outfit, Awadi seizes the microphone in front of his three-piece backing band. The military attire is apt. Propelled by a mid-tempo funk beat broken at intervals by mournful vocal harmonies, he launches into “Le Cri du Peuple” — “The Cry of the People” — a diatribe in French (still widely spoken in Senegal) about the sufferings of Dakar’s huge underclass:

“The city’s full of schemers, full of people with no job / They used to be honest men, but the system made them rob / The city’s full of easy sisters, looking for cash to score / Yesterday they were honest girls, but the system made them whores.”

Over the next hour, the group fires its verbal bullets at an array of targets — corrupt politicians, rising prices, foreign wars — amid a succession of richly conjured hip-hop hybrids with reggae, soul and sinister, synth-heavy riffs.

After the show, Awadi acknowledges being influenced by American hip-hop — he even went to New York to record his coming album with the duo Dead Prez as producers — but says that Senegalese hip-hop is usually far less swaggering and proudly thuggish.

“It’s a hip-hop influenced by social reality and politics that tries to tackle the problems and sicknesses of society,” he says.

He insists that he’s not cynical. He credits Senegalese rappers with motivating a widespread youth vote for Senegal’s historic 2000 elections, in which the populist Abdoulaye Wade defeated the longtime president Abdou Diouf, ending decades of Socialist rule. (Mr. Wade has subsequently fallen out of favor with many Senegalese, including Awadi.)

“We believe that another Senegal is possible,” Awadi sermonizes as the crowd disperses. “That another Africa is possible, that another world is possible.”

By day, the Dakar of Awadi’s people — poor, struggling, decaying, determined — comes vividly into view as I step out of the Hotel Farid into the hot, garbage-strewn streets of the city center.

Set against the glittering Atlantic, the grid of wide, French-built boulevards and crumbling narrow streets assaults the sensory apparatus at every entry point: the feel of dust and mosquitoes on the skin; the taste of exhaust fumes in the mouth; the smells of sweat and sewage and grilling meats in the nostrils; the chainsaw buzz of cheap scooters and the booming Muslim call to prayer echoing in the ears.

Even the short walk to the teeming indoor-outdoor Sandaga Market — where I head for local music CDs — brings all of Dakar’s contradictions to life. Gleaming Mercedes-Benzes crawl behind disintegrating jalopies and men pushing wheelbarrows. Art galleries and clothing boutiques nudge against cheap luncheonettes and abandoned storefronts. Suited Senegalese businessmen and Westerners (embassy staff? expatriate businesspeople?) brush past homeless families sleeping on the sidewalk.

There’s no danger — Dakar by day is largely safe — only the constant scent of desperation mingled with a periodic whiff of prosperity.

At the market, everybody wants a piece of the foreigner’s purse. Roaming hawkers flash me batteries, SIM cards, Scrabble games and cheap backpacks, using every imaginable entreaty. “Hey, Mister! Where you from?” “Ça va, Monsieur? Qu’est-ce que vous cherchez?” “Shake my hand! Shake my hand! Obama! Obama!”

After some friendly haggling with the music merchants, I come away with homemade bootleg discs of mbalax by Thione Seck — an old-school master of the genre who still thrills crowds with regular gigs around town — as well as Xalam. And though I’ve gotten the albums for a mere 1,000 CFA francs apiece (around $2.20 at 456 CFA francs to the dollar), I know I’ve still been politely fleeced.

That night, my quest to discover some of Dakar’s newer music takes me to Villa Krystal, the most recent challenger to established spots like Thiossane and Just4U — and maybe the least expected.

Opened in January by two French expatriates with no background in live music, the red living-room-like space was originally intended to give Dakar a restaurant “where we might actually want to eat,” says Lionel Mandeix, a co-owner and former ad man, with a laugh as he toys with his iPhone in the velvety dining area.

For the first five months, Villa Krystal’s musical programming — basically evenings when customers played a name-that-tune game — played second fiddle to the foie gras, rabbit in mustard sauce and other Gallic dishes. Everything changed when Dakar’s annual Fête de la Musique, a citywide festival, arrived in June. For Mr. Mandeix and his partner, Thomas Cazenave, a onetime banker, the dynamism of Dakar’s music scene was astonishing.

“We said to ourselves, ‘This place is really happening!’ ” Mr. Mandeix recalls.

The pair began booking bands and singers, but they were not interested in making yet another mainstream mbalax club. Instead, they have created a home to cultivate younger artists like Njaaya, a young local Afrogroove singer, and Naby, a Senegalese reggae artist who won this year’s Discovery Prize from the international French radio powerhouse RFI.

“We’re trying to open the range of music to include genres like hip-hop, folk and jazz,” Mr. Mandeix says.

On this night, however, the star attraction is Cheikh Lô, a longtime local favorite. Sporting huge sunglasses and waist-length dreadlocks, the skinny singer-guitarist sits with his unplugged band and plucks out his trademark mellow mbalax lite.

As Senegalese couples and a quartet of Spanish women watch from deep couches, the group slides into a mid-tempo mix of jazzy guitar chords, golden saxophone runs and the light pitter-patter of Senegalese drums, like rain on a roof, all punctuated by Cheikh Lô’s trebly wail.

In time, Brazilian elements begin to slip in — shakers, Rio-dreaming horn passages, minor-key shifts — transforming the sonic landscape into an Africanized Ipanema reverie. As the band strums and drums away, the mbalax rhythm is gradually subsumed. By the end of the set, the music is far less a beat for dancing than a soundscape for our late-night drives back to homes and hotels.

The week’s biggest new discovery awaits me at the Institut Français Léopold Sédar Senghor, a sprawling cultural center in downtown Dakar with a lovely outdoor concert amphitheater. Though known for its big-ticket events — an annual jazz festival, hip-hop awards, and shows by top West African acts — tonight the center is hosting part of its fifth annual Découverts series, dedicated to emerging music talents.

By 9 o’clock, the tiered seats are full of tweedy intellectuals from foreign embassies, Arabic-speaking young women in headscarves, N.G.O. workers in ethno-chic outfits, and many Senegalese hipsters. As the hour strikes, a hush falls over the crowd and the star of the night appears onstage to a burst of applause: Imany, a young French-Cameroonian vocalist and a protégé of Wasis Diop, an inventive singer-songwriter known for his moody and atmospheric compositions.

Backed by guitar, bass, drums and a string section, Imany moves through a set of original folk-rock songs, in English, that sound lifted from the notebooks of Tracy Chapman or Joan Armatrading.

But her finest moment is a track called “Spinning Around,” which she explains was written for her by Mr. Diop. Under melancholy bossa nova-esque music — brushes on the snare drum, Brazilian acoustic guitar chords — Imany spins a plaintive love story in a low smoky voice:

“Maybe tonight won’t hurt so bad / Maybe tonight your lies won’t seem so sad / I hear the music in the background / My head is spinning around.”

Above, stars glimmer in the African night as the bittersweet melody echoes through the rapt spectators. Afterward, some of the audience head to Just4U to experience the mbalax of Omar Pène. Others make their way to Villa Krystal to discover Njaaya. Wherever they go, another sublime Dakar musical moment seems all but assured.

By SETH SHERWOOD
New York Times
Published: December 6, 2009

http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/travel/06senegalmusic.html?pagewanted=1&emc=eta1

Music For Change

Senegal, the Baobab Tree, and Student Travel

IT’s known as the baobab in English, sito in Mandinka, gwi in Wolof and Adansonia digitata in botanical circles. Sometimes it’s called the upside-down tree, because its weirdly shaped branches resemble roots. It was made famous in the West by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s fable “The Little Prince.”

In Africa, the baobab tree is steeped in mystique and surrounded by superstition. Many people believe that its spirit protects the community around it, and its tangible properties certainly nourish those who live near it. Parts of the tree are used to make rope and fishing line; to feed goats, sheep and cows; and to provide shelter, food and medicine.

While living in Gambia I saw parts of the baobab used to treat everything from malarial fever, infertility and asthma to headaches and toothaches. I have no idea if and how these local remedies worked, but all of a sudden the rest of the world — Western health food companies included — is catching on. There’s a growing belief that the baobab may be the world’s newest super food.

The tree’s white, powdery fruit is rich in antioxidants, potassium and phosphorus, and has six times as much vitamin C as oranges and twice as much calcium as milk. The leaves are an excellent source of iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum and phosphorus, and the seeds are packed with protein.

The baobab was approved for European markets last year, and the Food and Drug Administration is expected to follow suit soon. The fruit’s dry pulp will be sold as an ingredient in smoothies and cereal bars. Already, a small jar of African baobab jam made in England sells for around $11. According to the Natural Resources Institute in Britain, an international baobab industry could bring in about $1 billion a year and provide jobs for 2.5 million African families. On paper this sounds great, but there’s another side to the picture.

The baobab has never been a plantation tree; it grows wild in arid regions. (It can also be found in Australia, but it thrives in few other places outside Africa.) Presently people harvest only what they need and maybe a bit more to sell at local markets. If it becomes an international commodity, the baobab probably would need to be planted as a crop, even though arable soil is limited. The open land where local people now freely harvest wild baobab could be developed by agribusinesses into plantations, or else precious forests or farmland used to grow everyday staple crops could be turned over to the baobab export industry.

Although local people would probably find jobs on such farms, their ability to harvest or purchase the baobab themselves would be limited. They wouldn’t be able to pay as much as London dealers could. This means that some Africans could lose a source of household wealth, an important part of their diet and an essential pharmaceutical resource.

These possibilities — not to mention the threat of corruption, poor wages and genetic modification leading to a loss of the tree’s biodiversity — are not random predictions. Africa is no stranger to the overexploitation of its natural resources. But the solution isn’t necessarily to cut the baobab off from international markets. Regulations could be put in place to protect the tree, its environment and the people who depend on it — and still allow for profitable production.

The coffee trade provides a model. It’s clear that many consumers are willing to pay more for fairly traded coffee — which costs enough to provide the growers a decent wage for their labor. This bottom-up pricing should be applied to the baobab market, even if it means European health nuts have to pay a lot for their smoothies.

The baobab’s new popularity is exciting, but the European Union, the United States and African exporters should decide on regulations before the baobab is rushed to European and North American markets.

In Saint-Exupéry’s story, the planet the Little Prince lives on is too small to support the baobab. This is hardly our situation, but the Little Prince still has some useful advice for us: Taking care of your planet, he says, “is very tedious work, but very easy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26starin.html

Senegal Proflie (General Travel)

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/senegal

Introducing Senegal

Couched between the arid desert lands in Northern Senegal and lush tropical forests in the south, this country boasts a stunning array of sights, sounds and flavours. The capital Dakar alone hands you the country in a capsule. Perched on the tip of a beach-lined peninsula, this dizzying city is composed elegance and street hustle all rolled into one. The busy streets, vibrant markets and glittering nightlife will easily draw you into their relentless rhythm, but the escape route is always open – be it to the meditative calm of the historical Île de Gorée or the golden sands of Yoff and N’Gor. And if Dakar’s sensory overload really gets too much, architecturally beautiful Saint-Louis, the first French settlement in West Africa, boasts a vibrant urban culture without the inner-city bustle.

Most visitors head to Senegal for its beaches, and for good reason. North and south of Dakar, wide strips of white sand invite swimming and sunbathing, whether in the built-up resort zones, where a lazy day at the beach can be followed by a cocktail trail at night, or in one of the coast’s charming fishing villages, the beaches of which are dotted with hundreds of colourful wooden pirogues. At the deltas of the Casamance and Saloum Rivers, the coastline is broken up into a maze of thick mangroves, tiny creeks, wide lagoons and shimmering plains. A pirogue trip through these striking zones reveals hundreds of bird species, from the gleaming wings of tiny kingfishers to the proud poise of pink flamingos. Whether you want to mingle with the trendsetters of urban Africa, or be alone with your thoughts and the sounds of nature – Senegal is the place to be.