Oct 21/04
Election Soundtrack
Let’s stick with African acoustic guitar music for another post, but this time we’ll move ahead a few decades to Pape & Cheikh in present-day Senegal. My buddy Laurent grew-up with these guys in the Siné Saloum region of south-central Senegal. Supposedly they’re pretty nice, but either way they put on great concerts and I love their music.
They sound a lot like Youssou N’Dour crossed with Cheikh Lô, maybe with a pinch of Dave Matthews. (Incidentally, I saw Dave Matthews and Trey Anastasio play with the Orchestra Baobab in Dakar a few months ago for some VH1 special they were filming here. Trey held his ground on the guitar but Dave looked and sounded like a small child afraid of the mic, awkwardly sharing the stage with the uber-confident Senegalese salsa superstars.) Indeed, Pape and Cheikh themselves cite artists such as Bob Dylan, Cat Stevens and Joan Armatrading as musical influences for their music. They mix a folky Western protest feel with traditional serer rhythms and singing and come out with a very modern but still Senegalese style.
The duo’s political leanings are obvious in their lyrics. What some might not know, however, is that their hit song “Yatal Gueew” (Widening the Circle) available on their 2002 album, Mariama, was adopted by opposition leader Abdoulaye Wade as his campaign theme song in the 2000 Senegalese presidential elections. It’s a great tune about how efforts must be made to reunite Senegal’s diverse ethnicities and political bodies. And hey, Wade scored a come-from-behind victory in the elections so the song’s gotta be doing something right. Have a listen below.
Tags: senegal
We have an election in the US next week. Hopefully Kerry will win – I’m doing everything I can to help defeat Bush.
I watched that show on VH1 – it was like a dream come true with two kinds of music I love ccoming together. I’m a fan both of Senegalese music and DMB. I would have loved to see them perform with Baaba Maal, which they mentioned but wasn’t on the show.
I gained a lot of respect for Trey when I saw that. I was never really a Phish fan, but he really impressed me, especially when he repeated Barthelemy’s solos note-for-note.
[...] After a rather riotous weekend it’s definitely time to take it down a notch. As many of you already know, some of my favourite music coming out of West Africa at the moment is acoustic guitar folk blended with local rhythms, languages and musical styles. Omar Pene’s Myamba, Cheikh Lô and Pape et Cheikh come to mind. Today’s track is right up that alley, and appropriately soothing given my heavy head tonight. [...]
[...] Daby Baldy is from Senegal, though I have to confess I never heard about him while I lived there. The album’s liner notes claim that he has been “long celebrated at home,” but I’m not so sure he’s super popular locally. This is true for a lot of Senegalese artists, Youssou N’Dour excepted, who produce music that appeals to audiences outside of the country. People like Daby Balde, Cheikh Lô, Pape and Cheikh and others play acoustic mbalax and fula sounds that appeal more to world music enthusiasts in North America and Europe than to hip-hop and pop mbalax-hungry local youth. [...]
[...] I’ve posted a couple contemporary Senegalese acoustic mbalax tunes from Cheikh Lô and Pape et Cheikh to give you an idea of why Pandero strikes me as “so Dakar”. [...]
[...] A few posts ago I mentioned seeing Dave Matthews looking really timid beside the salsa kings, the Orchestra Baobab, at a concert in Dakar. Did you know he was South African? I didn’t until today to be honest. I also didn’t know that Vusi Mahlasela is signed to his label… and so it goes. [...]