I wrote a post a while back about Mar Seck, un des rois de la musique salsa au Sénégal. The song I posted was called “Diongoma”, which I explained means something like “large, dominating Senegalese mother type” in Wolof. The classic image of the diongoma is of a rather chubby woman with one baby strapped to her back, draped in brightly coloured wax print cloth, bargaining and/or yelling at someone while chewing feverishly on a tooth cleaning stick. Read more about “la beauté XL” here.

Anyway, today I was listening to a great 2002 compilation by Stern’s Africa called The Music In My Head 2: Guitars Are From Mars Balafons Are From Venus when an old Thione Seck song came on, also called Diongoma. For some reason I hadn’t ever stopped to listen to this song, or notice it on the compilation. I love old Thione Seck, and this is a classic example.

Thioine Seck is still going strong in Dakar, hosting great live mbalax nights at his club, Kilimanjaro, beside Soumbédioune fish market. The bar beside Seck’s club, Le Soumbé, is also a good spot, except when there’s a downwind from the nearby canal. Seck’s old stuff is best, however, as is true for most of the older generation of Senegalese mbalax musicians. How I wish I could’ve been there during Senegal’s musical golden age during the 1970s.

Thione Seck – Diongoma

After yesterday’s smooth mbalax from Omar Pene, I thought I’d post one of his more typical mbalax tunes. Sa Jikko Ji was one of Pene’s big hits and it appears on Myamba as well, but as a slower acoustic song. The version I’ll post today is the original, featuring mbalax chanteuse extraordinaire Coumba Gawlo on backup.

I love Gawlo, so maybe I’ll post some of her music tomorrow. For me, her stage presence and singing style captures the in-yo-face-don-fuck-with-me attitude of the impossibly beautiful and impossible to get Dakaroise girls.

On this track you’ll hear Pene’s backup band, Super Diamono. They’re a mainstay on the Dakar scene, both with and without Pene. Their recently-released best-of,
Tey 30 Ans Déjà, is a great buy if you’re into that synth-rhythm-dance mbalax sound from the 80s and 90s.

Omar Pene & Super Diamono – Sa Jikko Ji

I’m back to daily postings now that I’m settled in Paris. Sorry for the blackout.

Omar Pene’s new album, Myamba, has been getting heavy rotation at my new apartment. On this album Pene takes his mbalax style, slows it down and then applies it to an acoustic base. The result is beautiful.

I’d normally associate mbalax with Dakar clubs filled with young, hot and sweaty 6ft-tall women, all shakin’ ass at an incredible speed. Pene, however, offers up a whole different take on the genre: almost latin, very chill and yet definitely West African.

Pene and his band, the Super Diamono, have dominated the Senegalese scene for decades. Only Youssou N’Dour surpasses this guy in energy and local reputation. I had the chance to see Pene a couple times while in Dakar – his shows are consistently great, filled with classic and enthusiastic posturing, dancing and drumming.

ps- in case your Wolof is a little rusty, saï saï translates roughly into “lady’s man” or “playa”.

Omar Pene – Saï Saï

I promised the other day that I’d post some more Senegalese mbalax music.

Mbalax star, Ndongo Lô, has a hard, classic mbalax sound filled with swift and complex percussion and enough synth to make any Casio hater cringe. His music is currently really popular at Dakar nightclubs and on the local radio.

Lô grew up in one of Senegal’s most dynamic – and poorest – neighbourhoods, Pikine. In 2000, when he was 25 years old, he released his first album, Ndoortel. It became an instant hit and Lô went on to release three full-length albums during the next four years. Lô appeals to the Senegalese masses because of his strong Mouride beliefs and his humble background. He sings only in Wolof about things your average guy from Pikine can relate to.

Unfortunately, Lô died this past January at the young age of 30 of some unspecified illness. Apparently after getting word of his death, thousands of his fans from Pikine and elsewhere tried to storm the hospital where he was being kept. The police had to dispatch a large group of armed gendarmes to protect the hospital from Lô’s grieving fans.

Lô was buried in Touba following a big ceremony attended by many prominent Senegalese, including lutteur exceptionel, “Tyson”, and big marabout, Serigne Mbacké.

Ndongo Lô & Papa Ndiaye Guewel – Deg Deg

I’ll soon be leaving Senegal and I’m starting to get pretty reminiscent. Dakar is a great city, one that you should try to visit at least once in your life. Horrible for tourists, known for its filth and street hasslers, it’s also home to some of the nicest people, best nightlife and cosmo meets traditional in all of West Africa. From the dive bars of plateau to the nightclubs of Pikine, it’s a wonderful place that, after nearly two and half years, I’m only beginning to understand and appreciate.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised when a Benn loxo reader, Dominique, wrote me a nice e-mail asking me to post some mbalax music. I have so many great memories of sweating my ass off at 4am in Dakar nightclubs, shaking it as best a white boy can in an impossible attempt at sabar to the mbalax rhythms.

For those not in the Senegalese know, mbalax is the music in Senegal. Popularized by the likes of Youssou Ndour, Thione Seck, Omar Pene and more, it has become the unofficial national sound. I’ve written before about how it never ceases to amaze me how local mbalax sounds dominate all aspects all aspects of nightlife – and taxi radio listening – when in other West African countries I’ve visited European and American influences run wild.

Last year Abdou Guité Seck’s album, Coono Evolution, was one of the big hits. Seck’s most successful single, Modou Modou, was repeated almost as much as Youssou Ndour’s 2003 single, Sa Ma Yaye.

Abdou Guité Seck hails from St-Louis, Senegal, a city on the Mauritanian border in northern Senegal. It’s one of my favourite spots in the country aside from the Casamance. You can get a good feel for the city in a great book I bought recently, Albin Michel’s Saint Louis du Sénégal. The picture on today’s post is also one I took in St-Louis a couple years ago.

Now, please, when you listen to this song there is a serious chance that your first reaction is going to be “what is this cheesy crap?” That’s the classic Western first-time reaction to mbalax music. But give it a few tries, and while you’re listening close your eyes and picture a beautiful Senegalese woman dancing the ventilateur. This was the big dance last year where Senegalese women present their jolies marmites to the men and shake them at about 200 rpms. Then, and only then, will you understand what the sabar is all about (and why it was banned at one time in some countries).

Abdou Guité Seck – Modou Modou

Cheikh Lô (pronounced “Shekh Low” with a throwty finish on the “kh”) may look like a Jamaican Rastafarian, but he’s actually a Baye Fall. Dressed in colourful cloaks and sporting mad dreads, Baye Falls are religious disciples of this guy named Cheikh Amadou Bamba, founder of the Mouride sect of Islam. (Depending on who you ask, Bamba got his followers to make him a fortune digging peanuts in return for the promise of eternal salvation.)

Now, those of us who live in Dakar really know that 95% of Baye Falls use the cult (oops, did I say that?) as an excuse to shake-down tourists for change, smoke lots of weed and drink alcohol with the supposed continued blessings of the Prophet. But though shunned by conservative muslims and reviled/loved by your average French tourist sporting “Africa pants”, Baye Falls are usually pretty nice guys. And generally they tend to be good musicians, too.

Enter Cheikh Lô. Ok, ok, he’s Burkinabé by birth and not Senegalese. But he’s lived in Dakar since the 70s, plays a latin-infused, mellow mbalax and is synonymous with the music scene here. You can catch him every Friday at Just4You in Dakar, or you can sample him here today. I’ve selected my favourite tracks from his two full-length LPs, Né La Thiass and Bambay Gueej .

ps- Rumour has it that the reason Cheikh Lô’s first full-length LP, Né La Thiass, made it to the US so late is because of a falling out between Lô and the album’s producer, Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour. Personally I like Lô’s music better that N’Dour’s so maybe Youssou had a jealous reason to hold back the sales? Ooh – Sahel gossip!

Cheikh Lô – Boul Di Tagale
Cheikh Lô – Mbeddemi

You see that girl? The one shaking her ass for the tamar player beside the logo up top? She’s dancing a mad sabar. If there was a soundtrack for that cartoon it would be mbalax. If mbalax has a king, it’s Youssou N’Dour.

Yeah, yeah. I know – 7 seconds with Neneh Cherry is a very annoying song. Worse still are Youssou’s forays into incomprehensibly cheesy Casio-based music over the last few years. But I promise that he really rocked in the early 80s.

I like mbalax music in small doses or when I’m wasted on a Dakar Friday night at 4am. But Senegalese popular music was best in my opinion around 1983 when Cuban rhythm roots were still present and the synthesizer hadn’t yet arrived in the port containers. Listen below and tell me that Youssou wasn’t better in the old days.

If you can find this song on CD I’ll be damned. But straight from Touba K7 in Dakar, here’s a hard to find Youssou 80s hit that’ll get those asses a shakin.

Youssou N’Dour – Massamba Thioul Anta