I spent a week in Senegal in April for the first time since October, 2006.

The city has changed a lot superficially: many highways and flyovers have been built, posh Iranian-made taxis fill the streets, and glittering new nightclubs with a 15 Euro entry and leather shoe requirement have sprung-up all over the Almadies neighbourhood. Many of my old haunts have closed and new ones have taken their place.

But I stress that things have only changed superficially. The overall feel of Dakar is unchanged. Despite all the admittedly great new roads – we were half-joking that Dakar’s infrastructure now easily tops western Ireland’s – car rapides still sputter for space with faded-glory Dakar Dem Dikk Tata buses and the occasional horse-drawn cart; my favourite places are mostly still open, serving dibi and zouk late into the night; Tidjian and Amadou still sit smiling by the door of my old building beside the CCF and greet me like I had just been out of town for a few days; I recognize the faces of many of the car wash kids from my neighbourhood, now grown up, looking bored, rags in hand; and Sandaga remains largely the same with its touts near the music stands pretending to recognize me…and maybe they do.

I paid a visit to probably my favourite bar in Dakar, Chez Diamy in Point E, and it was still packed with a sweaty mass of Ivoirians half-listening and half-dancing to coupé-décalé and zoblazo. No evening would be complete there without a drunken incident involving a stolen wallet and, sure enough, that hadn’t changed either. (It wasn’t mine.) I think they might have even played Miss Lolo at one stage. (Remember, Ed?)

So what does Dakar sound like these days? It’s hard to get a feel in just a few days but I grabbed a dozen or so albums and compilations anyway and paid attention to the playlists in taxis and bars whenever I could.

Without a doubt the biggest thing going in Dakar these days is Titi. Ask any mbalax fan in Dakar between the age of 16-30 and you’ll usually get a “Titi, j’aime titi,” which admittedly makes me laugh every time for every immature reason.

Titi is a hot little mbalax number – a classically tall, thin and beautiful Dakaroise woman – who gets about as much radio play these days as Youssou’s latest Live at Bercy. I think her voice sounds a lot like Michael Jackson in his child-star, Jackson 5 days. Check her out here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4yfyc_titi_music. The video for the song I’ll post is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_tFYKZx5TA. Great dancing.

It was also good to hear that some of the old stand-bys are still getting lots of play; Abdou Guitte Seck and Omar Pene were all over the radio.

There were many, many mbalax acts that I didn’t recognize. We’ll hear from Abdou Rass and Ngone Ndiaye today – two great tracks, and to fully understand the spirit (and dancing) of the music you should definitely check-out the videos at the great new-ish Senegalese video site, SenClip: http://www.senclip.net/video/Ngone-Ndiaye-leumbeul and http://www.senclip.net/video/ABDOU-RASS-KOLEURE.

We’ll also hear a good mbalax track by Sidy Samb. You can see his video at yet another Senegalese clip site, Seneweb Videos: http://videos.seneweb.com/viewVideo.php?title=Sidy_Samb_women&video_id=219

Ok, enough mbalax. Hip-hop is still alive and well in Dakar.. but is it just me or has the golden age of Dakar hip-hop finished for now? The hip-hop I’m hearing still sounds like the stuff that hit the airwaves 10-12 years ago. Not that that’s a bad thing, but I poured over quite a few compilations and found only a few solid tracks. But hey, I don’t live there any more. If you’re reading this and disagree please correct me.

It’s good to hear that Daara J minus DJ Makhtar is still producing good music… at least some of them. Daara J Family is the latest iteration, and Tomorrow is a genuinely good tune in the spirit of the original group, which in turn is in the spirit of Positive Black Soul. Check-out their MySpace page. Video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb_XWknv2ak

For something new-ish in the Dakar hip-hop scene we’ll hear from Res KP, a young Dakar rapper with a good sound. In much of his other music he, like many of his hiphop-galsène pals, tends to get a little too hardcore for my tastes. Positive Black Soul and their descendants were so wonderfully… native tongue. That gradual switch to a gangster sound is inevitable, I guess, and unfortunate. Res KP’s track, Calcul Mental, is good anyway. He has a MySpace page, too, and videos all over the web if you’re curious.

It’s impossible to talk about current Dakar music without playing some of that RnB cum reggae sound. Slower-jams are still infinitely popular in Senegal, but not all of it is crazy cheesy. (Notice we’ll skip the zouk.) See what you think of these two tracks by Carlo D and Maklan J.

Big love to Alex & Marianne, Pape, the Pitmans and the rest of you in Dakar who helped me remember what a great place it is.

Titi – Music
Abdou Guitte Seck – Domou Ndar
Omar Pene – Moom Tamit
Abdou Rass – Koleuré
Ngone Ndiaye – Leumbeul Lene
Sidy Samb – Women
Daara J Family – Tomorrow
Res KP – Calcul Mental
Makkan J – Reupeuteul
Carlo D – Yaye Fall

We’ve been hearing a lot of classic Congolese music lately. Time to move to other countries and other decades for a few posts.

We’ll head back to contemporary Senegal today. Benn loxo du taccu is a Wolof proverb, afterall…

The other night my friend Laurent, who lived in Senegal for about a decade, gave me a couple mbalax compilations. Most feature songs that were popular while I was living in Dakar and hitting up a lot of mbalax clubs- that’d be around 2002-2004.

Mbalax is always a little shocking for first-time listeners. Laurent and I only brought it out the other night after numerous bottles of wine had been consumed. We’ve discussed many times before on this site how it sounds cheesy at first. Heavy on the synth, frenetic rhythms.. yet strangely addictive and impossible not to dance to once you’ve learned to love the Dakar nightclub scene.

So three tracks today: first a mega-hit by Fatou Laobe that I’m sure you’ll know if you visited Senegal anytime during 2003-2004. The second is a nice one by Sidy Samb, just to show you another style of mbalax (video here). The third is a live recording of Mbaye Dieye Faye with a guest appearance by Youssou Ndour. The crowd really loses their shit over this one.. I love it.

All three come from Mbalax Tarkhiss compilations. They’re some of the better collections of popular music in Senegal. If you hear it at the club, in the taxi or on the radio you’ll soon find it on one of the frequent releases.

ps- check-out the great mbalax dancing in this Fatou Laobe video.

Fatou Laobe – Labat
Sidy Samb – Askan wi
Mbaye Dieye Faye – Deugeula

I have a great in with the Xhosa – I can pronounce the name of their tribe. While in Namibia a few years ago I spent some hours trying to perfect the various clicks and pops of the Xhosa language and it’s paid off.

I was just at a great brunch in Paris and there was a guy there who was born in Lesotho. What a great conversation starter: “one of my favourite African authors is Zakes Mda, a X(-pop!-)hosa author from South Africa…” See? Languages get you places, even if you only know a few syllables.

Today’s track has nothing to do with the Xhosa people, brunches, Paris or Zakes Mda. It’s off an album that many of you may have, but that I’ve recently rediscovered. I’m still riding the Dakar nostalgia after my week there.. memories of dancing late at night at the Kili to Thione Seck. Unfortunately the construction along the Corniche has killed the Kili and Soumbé vibe a bit these days.

Seck’s 2005 release, Orientation, is the result of his travels to Egypt and India. On the album he unearths oriental influences in his local Senegalese mbalax style and adds new Egyptian and Indian sounds to the mix. The result is mixed but some of the tunes, such as the one I’ll post today, are amazing.

I’ve had a lot of champagne and orange juice so I’ll keep it short. Have good Sundays..

Thione Seck – Doom

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

Following aduna’s comment I went out at lunch at picked-up Cheikh Lô’s latest. I have to say that at first listen I wasn’t really impressed. Much of it sounded over-produced and featured some rather cliché ‘world music new millennium!’ chord progressions and instruments. I swear, whoever brought the Casio keyboard and wind chimes to Africa should be tried and jailed. I’m also a firm believer that you can’t just tack a little talking drum onto an otherwise unimpressive tune and make it great.

That said, I got home and gave the disc another couple listens because I really like Cheikh Lô, with a particular respect for the way he performs live. Also, while his last album, Bambay Gueej, wasn’t a masterwork, his first album, Né La Thiass, is a true classic and one of my favourite contemporary West African recordings.

With some good headphones on the production is often worth it and after a few listens I caught lots more of the background rhythms and other sounds going on in the music. I can now honestly say that there about four or five tracks I get a good kick out of, and this number certainly depasses what I need to like an album. So yeah, final verdict: give it a few listens before you decide, but definitely worth a buy especially if you’re into the acoustic mbalax scene out of Senegal.

The in-thing to do these days for West African musicians is to combine Senegalese music with sounds and instruments from the Middle East, South America and Asia. Cheikh Lô’s sitting on that bandwagon with Youssou, Thione Seck and the others, and came up with a couple interesting results. As I’ve been on a bit of a Brazilian binge lately (during my African music off-time) I thought I’d feature Lô’s track, Senegal-Brésil alongside my favourite tune to come out of Brazil by the great Jorge Ben.

ps- at the end of Lô’s track you’ll hear them chanting, “Sénégal, jamm rekk.” Jamm rekk translates literally into “peace, only” and is one of my favourite expressions in the Wolof language. Try it yourself: next time someone says to you, “hey man, how’s it going?” look them in the eye all serious-like and reply, “peace, only.”

Chiekh Lô – Sénégal-Brésil
Jorge Ben – Ponta de Lança Africano

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.

Les Frères Guissé are Haalpular folk musicians originally from the Fouta in north-eastern Senegal. They now live in Dakar and have recently toured in Europe and the States. Today’s track comes from the Acoustik M’balax compilation now available at your local Sandaga market CD stand.

Thanks and a shout-out to Astrid for the fresh, nice-sounding import.

Frères Guissé – Démocracie

A lot of people have been sending me some great, harder to find stuff lately. Benn loxo fan and nice guy, Dominique, ripped a copy of his Super Jamono de Dakar Geedy Dayaan LP the other day and sent it my way. I spliced the album up into tracks and picked my favourite to post for you today.

Super Jamono is another Dakar-based mbalax band from the 1970s and 80s. I’m 90% sure that’s Omar Pene on vocals, and most of the other band members also played in Super Diamono at the time. You might have been able to guess that if you can pronounce a French-spelled Wolof dia-. The sound is classic early mbalax, though this album has a hint of psychedelia tossed in on a few tracks.

One of these days I’ll make it out to one of the Parisian Sunday mbalax parties, but up until now I’ve at least danced a couple sabars at the Jokko and others, Flag in hand.

ps- my Wolof is a bit rusty now. What does muugn mean?

Super Jamono – Muugn