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Acoustic Music in Senegal

Seydina Insa Wade, the father of Senegalese folk music

On 9 May 2012, the news of Seydina Insa Wade’s death appeared on Facebook, accompanied by nostalgic photographs and heartfelt tributes from his many friends and fans. He had been diagnosed with cancer in early 2012, but his death still came as a shock to the whole of Senegal. One of the pillars of Senegalese music, Seydina was a singer-songwriter whose texts and melodies influenced all of Senegal’s major artists, not least Youssou N’Dour, Baaba Maal, Ismaël Lô, Les Frères Guissé, Pape and Cheikh and more recently a new generation of rap artists, including Seydina’s own nephew El Hadji Man (ex Daara J). Youssou had in fact visited Seydina when he was hospitalised in Dakar and made a generous contribution towards his medical expenses.

Born in Dakar in 1948 into a Lébou fishing family, Seydina grew up in the popular quarter of Gueule Tapée near the port of Soumbédioune, an area he referred to as ‘the Harlem of Dakar’. Many of the musicians we know today were born and bred there, including Charley Ndiaye and Abdoulaye Mboup, who went on to join Orchestra Baobab but who began their musical careers along with Seydina in the Rio Sextet, named after the nearby Rio cinema. Son of an imam, Seydina was educated at a Koranic school, where he learned to recite the Koran and write the Arabic script. Although he spoke French, he did not write it; rather he used elegantly written Arabic characters to reproduce phonetically what he heard. He was a true artist, one for whom art is life and life is art. Once he told me that the first time he met his friend and fellow Lébou, the artist Issa Samb (alias Joe Ouakam), they were so fascinated by each other that they began to talk and they began to walk and they did not stop until they reached the town of Thies, some fifty miles from Dakar.

Seydina’s early songs reflected the melodies of the Layenne religious community to which he belonged. He was greatly influenced not only by the Cuban music that was in vogue in Dakar during his adolescence, but also by the top groups from the entire West African region including Bembeya Jazz, Ifang Bondi and the West African Cosmos. He was especially intrigued by the flute-playing of Boncana Maïga, who had trained in Cuba.

In 1968, when a spirit of revolutionary change swept through world politics, Seydina sympathised with the intellectual left in Senegal, in particular the family of Omar Diop Blondin, who died in prison without a trial. By now Seydina had established himself as the pioneering voice of Senegalese folk music sung in Wolof and had become a well-known figure in Dakar’s artistic community. His lyrics raised social issues that were controversial at the time, such as female genital mutilation and women’s rights. In 1974 Seydina’s composition ‘Tablo Feraay’ was boycotted by Senegal’s state radio station, who deemed it contentious, but was chosen by film-maker Cheikh Ngaido Ba as the soundtrack for his short film of the same name. Songs like the early hit ‘Khandiou’, sung with style and humour, offer charming portraits of Senegalese life.

In 1975 Seydina left the original Xalam group to join the Negro Stars and then La Plantation. Later, he and Idrissa Diop were lead vocalists in Sahel, the resident band of the Sahel Club. In 1985 the pair were joined by Oumar Sow to make up an acoustic trio, Tabala, whose album Yoff was the talk of Dakar. When Eric Sylvestre organised a tour of France, Switzerland and Italy for Tabala, Seydina stayed on in France, where he spent six years with the group Xalam II.

It was with considerable emotion that Seydina and Oumar were reunited in Dakar in 2003 to perform together in the newly opened Just 4 U Club, a reunion which was filmed by Ousmane William Mbaye for a 2004 documentary entitled Xalima: La Plume. When I set up the independent label Stargazer Records in Northern Ireland, our first international release was Seydina’s album Xalima (The Pen), which features Oumar Sow on guitar, Souleymane Faye’s guest vocals and Jean-Philippe Rykiel on keyboards.

My abiding memories are from the weeks when Seydina and Oumar, whom I married in 2002, toured in Ireland. Seydina stayed in our home, and he liked to meet the locals over a drink at a nearby pub, cook the evening meal and then settle in to rehearse with Oumar. The two played well into the night, their guitars complementing each other in an original blend of African traditional styles, blues and jazz. The audiences at their concerts from Belfast to Derry to Dunfanaghy on the north Donegal coast responded to a melodic acoustic repertoire similar to Irish folk music, and to Seydina’s gift for storytelling. As he introduced each song with an anecdote in French they seemed to understand what he was saying even before Oumar offered a translation in English.

79. Seydina Insa Wade and Oumar Sow.

Like all of Seydina’s friends, I was deeply saddened by his passing. He was a truly gentle soul who cared about the finer things in life: good food, good wine and beautifully crafted textiles. He typically wore immaculate white plimsoles, a jaunty hat and a carefully laundered linen or cotton lawn shirt which he probably purchased in a second-hand market like the Marché aux Puces in Paris. He was laid to rest in Yoff near his spiritual guide, Mame Limamou Laye.

Pape and Cheikh

Cheikhou Coulibaly was born in Kaolack in 1961, and Papa Ahmadou Fall in Dakar in 1965, though his family also moved to Kaolack. Children of the Sixties, they were fans of Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel, and theirs is a story typical of aspiring musicians, filled with struggles and moments of despair.

When he first met Cheikh, Pape was singing lead vocals in a folk choir in Kaolack. However, the weather in the town caused him to suffer with nosebleeds (Kaolack is one of the hottest places in Senegal, and the air is heavy with salt and sand) until he and Cheikh moved to Dakar. Pape spent many years working in the Colobane market in the city, sewing in a tailor’s shop or sorting through the second-hand clothes that come from Europe and are then sold on stalls in the Marché des Venants street market. When he joined Cheikh at the music conservatoire in Dakar they made a special study of Serer folklore before again going their separate ways – Cheikh to play with Ouza Diallo and Pape to sing with Sampta Muna, a Serer acoustic group who performed on the hotel circuit.

80. Pape and Cheikh.

In 1997 Pape and Cheikh became a performing duo, and two years later they recorded the album Yaakar (Hope) at Youssou’s Xippi studio, for release on the Jololi label. They were supported by many of the leading musicians in the country including Jimi Mbaye and Oumar Sow on guitar, Mbaye Dièye Faye on sabars and Assane Thiam on tama. Canadian musician Mac Fallows, who produced the album, played keyboards and added a refining touch to Pape and Cheikh’s song arrangements. The result is an alluring collage of vibrant voices, acoustic guitars, staccato sabars, tama and kora with authentic rhythms like the pulsating ndioup, the Serer equivalent of the beguine, and the ndiom beat of a Serer wrestler’s dance. Viviane N’Dour, Youssou’s sister-in-law, and Alassane Fall sang backing vocals while Mamy Kanouté, a nineteen-year-old with a voice as powerful as the mature Yandé Codou Sène, sang over the opening bars of ‘Mariama’, setting the scene for a rustic tale of intrigue and jealousy and securing for herself a special place in the Pape and Cheikh repertoire. The entire album has a singular energy and clarity.

One of the tracks on Yaakar, ‘Yataal Geew’ (‘Widen the Circle’), was taken up by Abdoulaye Wade of the Democratic Party of Senegal, who won the presidential elections in 2000 with the slogan Sopi, the Wolof word for ‘change’. The song, which was inspired by traditional baptisms and weddings – where the circle (geew) grows around the sabar drummers and dancers as more and more guests arrive – recommends ‘widening the circle’ by standing up for universal values of democracy, tolerance and peace. In April 2001, ‘Yataal Gueew’ became a musical manifesto for all but a few of the twenty-five political parties contesting the Senegalese legislative elections.

The album’s success didn’t stop there, though. In 2002 I signed a licensing deal with Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records on behalf of Jololi Productions and negotiated a publishing contract with Bug Music in London. The tracks were remixed at the Real World studios by Ben Findlay before the international release of the album, renamed Mariama. Tracy Chapman was so impressed by their performance on the BBC’s Later with Jools television programme, in which she also took part, that she chose Pape and Cheikh as the support group for her 2003 European tour.

Cheikh Lô

In 1994, Cheikh Lô, a singer and songwriter whose dreads and patchwork costumes distinguish him as an artist with attitude and a Baye Fall (a follower of Cheikh Ibra Fall, Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba’s right-hand man), approached Youssou with a demo tape that he had been carrying around in his bag for two years. After listening, Youssou agreed to produce the tracks in his Xippi studio for release on his Jololi label.

When it came to the recording sessions, the original ideas were so distilled and powerful and the musicians so flexible and experienced that six songs were recorded and mixed in nine days. What emerged is a beautifully understated and captivating collection of sweet melodies, seductive guitar lines and sparkling sabar drums.

Consummate musicianship, impeccable style and a pervasive spirituality characterise each track on Né La Thiass. Many of the songs are imbued with the spirit and teaching of the Mouride Islamic brotherhood. Just as the word Islam defines those who submit to the will of God, so Muslims will understand the notion of destiny which can, in an instant (né la thiass), change even the best-laid plans. The novelty of the album, which transcends borders and musical categories, lies in its overall concept, an acoustic/electric mix featuring double bass, acoustic guitar, tama, cymbals, sabars and brushed drums, flute and the merest hint of electric bass and keyboards. Infectious rhythms, including the rare mbalax they call dagan or thieboudiene, infuse the album with energy, but the mood is intriguingly and accessibly Latin.

Né La Thiass was instantly successful in Senegal and when, as Cheikh Lô’s manager, I secured a licensing deal with World Circuit in London, it received excellent reviews; for British journalist Rose Skelton it was ‘pure acoustic bliss with the rawness of reggae and the slinkiness of jazz mixed up with Cheikh Lô’s cool voice full of wry humour.’1

81. Mor Gueye’s suwer painting of Senegalese singer Cheikh Lô.

Born of Senegalese parents, Lô grew up in the late 1950s in an ethnically mixed community in Bobo Diolasso, a small town in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), where he showed an early passion and aptitude for music. He learned many local dialects and listened to regional styles, especially the Zairean bolero, which has its roots in Cuban son. Cuban music was all the rage at that time, and when his older brothers put their 78s on the turntable and danced with their girlfriends to hit songs by Pancho el Bravo, Cheikh could mime the Spanish lyrics exactly even though he hardly knew what they meant. Then the family moved to Senegal, where Cheikh taught himself to play guitar and drums and, once he left school, he joined Ouza Diallo’s band. By the early 1980s he was entertaining tourists with cover versions of popular Western hits at the poolside bar of the Savanna Hotel in Dakar, but he soon left for Paris, spending two years as a session musician at the Bastille Studios. On his return to Dakar he composed ‘Doxandeme’ (‘Street Hawker’), which appears on Né La Thiass, about the plight of his Senegalese brothers and sisters abroad.

Other tracks on the album are influenced by Cheikh’s life, for example ‘Guiss Guiss’, a praise song written in honour of the centenarian Mame Massamba Ndiaye. Every Sunday when he lived in Dakar Cheikh would travel to Ndiguel, a village a hundred miles from Dakar, to take tea with his spiritual guide and marabout, who was an uncle of Cheikh Ibra Fall and an intimate friend of Sérigne Fallou Mbacké. Cheikh also began to refer to himself as Cheikh ‘Ndiguel’ Lô around this time.

The importance to Cheikh of being a Baye Fall is also reflected in the lyrics of his song ‘Cheikh Ibra Fall’, which suggest that there would be no waste and less poverty if everyone was as thrifty and resourceful as the Baye Fall leader. Interestingly, this song links neatly to another track on the album; while Cheikh Lô, who also believes that cleanliness is next to godliness, was completing his album there was a municipal strike in Dakar, and the subsequent accumulation of rubbish in the streets so incensed him that he wrote ‘Set’ to warn of the dangers to health. Youssou’s vocal interventions on this song and on ‘Guis Guis’ match the mood of the album, which is warm, lyrical, passionate and entirely pleasing.

After the release of his albums Bambay Gueej (1999), Lamp Fall (2005) and Jamm (2010), all on the World Circuit label, Cheikh Lô understood that patience pays. With the release of his 2015 album Balbalou, produced by Swedish producer Andreas Unge for French label Chapter Two Records, he once more gained critical acclaim and surpassed all his previous achievements when he won the prestigious 2015 WOMEX Artist Award. In December of the same year he was honoured with an invitation from President François Hollande to perform at the closing ceremony of the historic Summit on Climate Change in Paris which hosted 40,000 delegates from 195 countries.

82. Baye Fall followers of Cheikh Ibra Fall.