More music from the Sénégal Flash series today, this time off the Kaolack compilation.

Kaolack is a city of about 300,000 people in Senegal’s Siné-Saloum region. It’s a major transport hub for Tamabcounda, Dakar, The Gambia and Senegal’s south, so most people living in Senegal have spent at least some time there, myself included.

Unfortunately, aside from transport activities there isn’t much going on there. The city is quite poor these days and pollution is a big problem, hence the efforts of groups like Teranga Kaolack to help get the city back on its feet. The city does, however, have a great mosque – check-out the picture on today’s post.

Back to the music. I know nothing about Sahel, the first group you’ll hear, except that their track Bamba is an amazing-sounding, early mbalax earful. Ouza’s balad, Bouba, is great, too, because it makes me think of so many Senegalese concerts I’ve been to: long, long proclamations in the middle of every second song, with money stuffed into the performers’ shirts by adoring fans; random guys hopping up on stage to dance, or sometimes just to chill-out; awkward slow dances and shy smiles between normally separated men and women.

Sahel – Bamba
Ouza – Bouba

I stumbled upon a nice compilation by the Parisian label and production house, Arion, yesterday. It features a few artists and songs from various Senegalese and Malian communities, notably some nice kora by Lamine Konté and great vocal work by Mariam Diakité that accompanies Soungalo Coulibaly’s djembe drumming.

Compilations like this are good in the sense that they seamlessly mix Senegalese and Malian music, showing how the political borders have nothing to do with the cultures they enclose. The Peul, Mandingue, Fulani and even Wolof communities and their music span much of West Africa.

Both Konté and Coulibaly have had long and successful careers as ambassadors for their respective instruments and styles. Thanks to an active new generation of kora players like Toumani Diabaté, the instrument has become quite well-known outside of West Africa. It’s thanks to big-name griots like Konté and others, however, that the musical and playing styles were preserved over the years. Similarly, Soungalo Coulibaly’s djembe playing has brought it to a wider audiance, though I’m pretty sure the Baye Falls I can hear hammering away at their sheep skins right now would’ve kept the tradition alive and well for many years to come.

You can buy several of Coulibaly’s albums from Arion, and much of Konté’s music can be found at Sonodisc.

Lamine Konte – Telephonista
Soungalo Coulibaly – Jina Musa

I think the last time time I was in Louga was when a sept-place (think Peugeot station wagon that somehow fits seven passengers) broke-down on the way back from Saint-Louis. It was late at night so I decided to stay a while rather than sit by the car, waiting for the small, motor oil covered kids to finish fixing the engine. I wandered into some downtown bar with a take-away chawarma and ordered a Flag. They were playing warped casettes full of old music just like this.

I’m not sure why I haven’t stumbled upon the Sénégal Flash compilations before, but they’re amazing. They’re great collections of older, sometimes hard to find music usually only available on bad quality casettes. Each is named after a different city in Senegal or The Gambia, though I’m not entirely sure why since the music on each disc is mostly by groups from Dakar.

Either way, I love it. More Sénégal Flash cities to come…

ps- the title is an obvious shout-out to the good people over at Awesome Tapes From Africa.

Star Number One – Faran Tamba
Guelewar – Wartef Jiggen
Baobab Gouye Gui – Yen Saay

I’m finally done a week of work so I have some time to hit the markets, wander Dakar by day and pick-up lots of music. Today alone I bought 23 albums, all of which I’ll share with you over the next few weeks.

The other night I was having drinks at Just4You and saw a great group of young guys comprised of a percussionist, a couple kora players and a singer/rapper. The tempered Wolof rapping mixed with more traditional, mandigue-style singing sounded amazing overtop of the talented kora play. Unfortunately they didn’t have any music to sell.

That’s ok, though, since today at one of my favourite music shops up near Cité Claudel I discovered a new, young Senegalese musician named Alune. He’s a Dakarois bass player whose father was a symphonic orchestra conductor. By the age of 13 he’d picked the bass and five years he was selected to play in Ismael Lo’s band.

Alune’s first solo release, Mbolo, is a well-produced mix of many musical styles. I just noticed that he played at the Sattelit Café in Paris a couple days ago and was featured on RFI. This guy looks set to get big if he keeps it up.

Alune – Mame
Alune – Sokhna ci

Many of my friends here have had a relatively rough rainy season. Despite the sun, surf and mean brochettes there are occasional downsides to living in Dakar. One friend has typhoid, another has malaria, a few are stressed for reasons best described by financial stamps and rubber cachets, and others are contemplating leaving and how to make that happen. For these reasons and more I picked a mean mbalax tune entitled Solidarité for today’s post.

Not to start-off on a downer or anything… for me at least things are going great here. Freshly-squeezed orange juice and a Walf Fadrji newspaper in the morning, a spicy ceebu jën at lunch, work all day and then sweaty bars with JB and Gazelles at night. The nightlife is near dead because of Ramadan, but it creates a kind of eerie-but-pleasant ambiance in the fluorescent-lit restaurants, bars and clubs.

The sun is hiding behind a thick veil of hivernage clouds but I think it’ll clear up by the weekend. Then there’s the beach, maybe some diving and maybe even a trip down south to enjoy. In the meantime I’ll try to hit the markets tomorrow and Friday and pick-up some more music.

This song is really popular in Dakar at the moment. You’ll hear it in taxis, bars, nightclubs and hissing out of tiny radios held closely to the ear by the thousands of property guards scattered around downtown.

ps- my brother is getting married! Ben, I’ve been raising Flags and Gazelles to you all week. Congratulations.

Nder – Solidarité

I’m finally back in Dakar for a week after nearly a year and a half away.

I got home at 6:30am this morning after a fantastic Paris Nuit Blanche. There was just enough time for about an hour of sleep before I had to leave for the airport.

During the flight the skies were clear so I got a beautiful view of the Saharan dunes 12000m below as we flew over Morocco and Mauritania. Feeling very tired and with a mean hangover, I can’t tell you how good the humid, hot Dakar air felt when it hit my face as I stepped off the plane.

The city hasn’t changed too much since I left. There are more generators humming outside of hotels and market stands (a sad testament to Dakar’s dying electrical infrastructure), the Cathedral and Corniche mosque got makeovers, the roads are a mess from major construction projects, but Dakar is still Dakar.

There are dudes lying out on mats in the street, exhausted from the heat and Ramadan fasting, that smell of diesel, sweat, smoke, Maggi and okra hanging in the air, Lebanese dishing out tasty midday burgers stuffed with fries, onions, meat, eggs and who knows what else, rabatteurs trying to follow me around as I shop for records, street kids playing football in front of fast-moving, rusty and beautifully painted public buses… I could go on and on. I missed this place.

I’m about to meet an old friend for Gazelles and dibi at a great maki up in Castor but I wanted to get a quick post in as a way of welcoming me and, by extension, the Benn loxo community, back to Dakar.

Two tracks today. One live Youssou N’Dour track that really shows the incredible energy that he has on stage, and another mbalax tune that most likely not at your local record store. Mbalax is, after all, the unofficial national music.

Youssou N’Dour – Ndakaru
Assane Ndaye – Baye laye

Lately I’ve been getting so much new music from Benn loxo listeners that I can’t keep up. Big thanks for all the great sounds coming my way. I promise I’ll get to all of it.. just give me some time and keep tuning in.

Several of you have asked for more Kenyan music and that champeta post a while back got some great feedback. With these two requests in mind, Benn loxo listener, Fabián, came through with a classic Orchestra Super Mazembe track in both its original format and as a champeta remix. You can also check-out his web site, Africolombia, with much more music.

Apologies in advance if I got the champeta group name wrong – please correct me, but it wasn’t clear from the song tag or some armchair research who exactly recorded this tune.

Orchestra Super Mazembe is actually a Congolese band by origin, forming as Super Vox in Likasi, Congo-Kinshasa, in the mid-60s. After meeting up with the Super Eagles in Zambia a few years later the band decided to hit-up the booming music scene in Nairobi, Kenya. Since Nairobi already had another band named Super Vox they changed their name to Super Mazembe, which roughly translates into “huge bulldozer”.

From the mid-1970s onwards Super Mazembe released several big hits in Nairobi, maintaining a large following right-up until the late 80s. Today’s track was released in 1983. You can find it on Earthworks re-release, Giants of East Africa.

Orchestre Super Mazembe – Shauri Yako
Dogar Dis – Quedo en las tablas

Were/are any of you into Arthur Russell? The driving bass drum and repetitive melodies in Juma Muhina’s recordings with Nairobi Matata remind me a lot of his music.

If you know Arthur Russell, your first reaction might be that Kenyan Swahili rumba doesn’t have much to do with early disco pioneers. But give today’s track a listen and tell me they don’t go great together on a mix. The release dates are roughly similar and who’s to say the dudes in Nairobi Matata didn’t have a secret love for underground NY disco? Not so secretly, I wish there had been more fusion along these lines.

Dada Mwajuma was a popular tune when it was originally released in 1977. It was produced by the accomplished musician Isaya Mwinamo Asiebera, who also produced albums for many of the other big local groups at the time such as Orchestra Mazembe (some of their tunes coming tomorrow if I have time), Daudi Kabaka and Orchestra Viva Makale.

Big thanks goes out to Benn loxo listener, Zim, who pointed out the Juma Muhina album amongst numerous great Music Copyright Society of Kenya re-releases on Orchard now available on Emusic. I’ll be featuring a few over the next while.

This reminds me how a friend of mine would quietly mix Xplastaz into French hip-hop parties, or how I try to hide amazing West African funk tracks on soul mixes for people who wouldn’t normally be into it. Which reminds me… check back tomorrow.

Juma Muhina – Dada Mwajuma (Part 2)
Arthur Russell – Dinosaur L / Go Bang (Francois Kevorkian mix)

While living in Dakar I never quite figured out was why I had so many conversations like this :

“What’s your favourite kind of music?”
“Rap, RnB.”
“Oh, yeah. Cool. What groups are you into?”
“You know, Jay-Z, Daara J, 50 Cent, Pharrell and Phil Collins.”
“Did you just say Phil Collins?”
“Yeah, I like to chill-out to Phil Collins, maybe mix it up with some Usher.”

It’s at moments like this where I feel very Canadian/French/not-Senegalese. Could someone from Dakar please tell me why Phil Collins is so loved in Senegal? Seriously, he’s been top 10 radio play for as long as I’ve known the country.

To make matters even more confusing, another Benn loxo reader reports that you can’t go a day in Rwanda without hearing some Kenny Rogers.

Now don’t get me wrong- I love a little Phil and Kenny. I’ll even admit that when I dug-out my copy of I’m Not Moving I was all, “Damn, Phil!”

Hopefully we get some answers. I’d also like it if someone to finally gave me a good answer as to why are there dozens of Madonna and/or Rambo stickers on every public bus in Senegal. Not to mention the classic Dakar-new-arrival question, “why do radio stations play the complete Chariots of Fire title track before the news at 6?”

I bet this one will really scare the podcasters who never read the posts.

Phil Collins – I’m Not Moving
Kenny Rogers – Ticket To Nowhere

Many of you wrote comments and e-mails praising the music from August 21st post on Momo Wandel Soumah. Thanks to several offers, I got my hands on a copy of his 1990 release, Matchowé.

The whole album is fantastic. Wandel’s West African-infused jazz sextet handles the fusion of musical styles perfectly, and his strange but lovely voice ties it all together. Among others, their cover of John Coltrane’s Afro Blue and the first recording of the song I featured last time, Toko, are gems.

I have a million things to do today so I can’t say much more, but if you’re curious about Wandel or his music check-out this article over at Afropop.

Momo Wandel Soumah – Bokme
Momo Wandel Soumah – Afro Blue
Momo Wandel Soumah – Toko