Catlike and delicate in appearance, Baaba Maal sings with hurricane force. From the northern, riverside town of Podor comes a modern musician filled with the mysteries of ancient Africa. His music embraces the gentle filigree of West African folk, the tumult of mbalax and the toughness of rap and reggae.
Maal comes from the Toucouleur people who live in the Fulani fouta region, by the Senegal River, which divides Senegal and Mauritania. Young Baaba left home and moved to the Wolof-dominated capital Dakar to study music and explore his national culture. He soon returned home and spent a year with his group traveling along the Senegal River and learning from the old musicians, village by village.
In 1982, Maal went to a conservatory in Paris, where he performed with his longtime friend, the blind singer Mansour Seck. The duo pricked up ears in Europe before going back to Senegal to form Maal's current group, Dande Lenol, or "Voice of the People." The group has played a key role in African pop's incorporation of hip-hop, reggae and techno, notably on their landmark 1994 release, Firin' in Fouta.
Maal also maintains an acoustic group that plays and records folkloric music. A true original, Maal celebrates village life even as he advocates contemporary causes, including women's rights in Africa. Like the griots he admires, Maal sings of history and heroes, bringing the lessons of the past into peoples' lives today. Maal has been a mainstay of the Africa Fês summer festival, making his third appearance in the traveling event in 1999.-- Afropop.org Editor Banning Eyre
Senegalese artist Baaba Maal is a giant of world music, blowing away audiences all over the globe and achieving legendary status on his home continent. His high, uplifting vocals, powerfully plaintive wails and twisting melodies can send shivers down your spine and raise the hair on the back of your neck. Often accompanied by a variety of African instruments such as the kora (a harp/lute hybrid), Maal takes advantage of sprawling backing ensembles sparked by tight rhythms, a bright chorus of singers,colorful brass and everything from Celtic pipes to Western dance beats. Not only is he an intense performer, but his compositions are righteous, standing up for oppressed people of the world, women in particular.
A superstar in his native Senegal, spiritual pop singer, Baaba Maal was not even born to be a performer. In West African culture, tradition dictates that the ancient griot caste must produce the singers and storytellers, and Maal was born in the city of Podor in 1953 into the fisherman's casteDespite his parents' insistence that he become a lawyer, he grew up surrounded by music, absorbing both the traditional sounds of the region as well as American R&B and soul, later discovering jazz and blues. As a teen Maal moved to Dakar, joining the 70-piece orchestra Asly Fouta and teaming with his guitarist friend Mansour Seck to form the group Lasli Fouta; during the early 1980s, the duo also spent several years in Paris, where they recorded the 1984 album Djam Leelii. Upon returning to Senegal, Maal formed the group Daande Lenol (literally, "The Voice of the Race") and began honing a highly distinctive sound fusing traditional African music with elements of pop and reggae; in 1988 he issued the LP Wango, the first in a series of highly successful albums which also included 1991's Baayo, 1992's Lam Toro and 1994's Firin' in Fouta. In 1998, Maal released Nomad Soul - the first recording on Chris Blackwell's new Palm Pictures label, it featured cameos by Brian Eno, Howie B. and others. Jombaajo followed in the spring of 2000.
« Hide Description
A - B
