The Senegalese musician performed in A Room for London on 15 July 2012
Baaba Maal
During the first decade of the 21st century, there has been a leap in perception about the role of Baaba Maal, the master Senegalese musician.
Not only is he perceived as one of the very greatest of all West African artists, but as he has made abundantly clear, Baaba Maal's mission in the region extends beyond his music.
Baaba Maal has long been driven by a vision of uplifting the African continent. As Youth Emissary for the United Nations' Development Programme, Baaba is committed to the concerns of families, young people and the future of the continent: 'This position I have been given strengthens my determination to work harder and contribute more to improving the living conditions of disadvantaged people of the African continent, especially young people, whose future is seriously threatened by illiteracy, poverty and HIV/AIDS. When I involve myself with Africa, my idea is of how Africa will grow into the new millennium. This is why I really wanted to make music, so more people can listen to my messages.'
To this end, in 2003 he played the Nelson Mandela 46664 Concert in Cape Town in South Africa; and the next year performed at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, for Dr Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan environmental campaigner who won that year's Peace Prize. In 2007, he played at the African Union heads of state summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and also performed at the Live Earth Concert in Johannesburg, South Africa.
And how could Baaba Maal forget his home nation of Senegal? In 2002 he sang the Senegalese National Anthem at the opening match between France and Senegal of the FIFA World Cup Finals in Seoul in South Korea – Senegal won the game. In December 2010 he was a centrepiece of the World Festival of Black Arts and Culture held in the Senegalese capital of Dakar.
With and without his group Daande Lenol, Baaba Maal has now released 10 albums, beginning with 1988's Wango. At the start of the 1990s, Baaba Maal set his standard with a succession of stylistically varied, masterly sets of material: Baayo, Lam Toro, and Firin' in Fouta; followed in 1998 by a pair of releases, Nomad Soul and a re-issue of Djam Leeli, the acoustic album he recorded with his frequent collaborator, the great guitarist Mansour Seck. During the last decade, he put out the traditional-sounding Missing You, and the more experimental Television.
During this time Baaba Maal has kept up his rigorous global touring commitments.
In the UK, he has consistently topped the bill at prestigious events: in 2005, he not only headlined one of the BBC Proms Concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall, but also Glastonbury festival and the Africa Remix festival at London's Royal Festival Hall; in July of that year Baaba led off the Make Poverty History March at the G8 protest in Edinburgh.
In collaboration with Damon Albarn, he worked on the large-scale Africa Express project; and in 2009 he headlined The African Soul Rebels tour of the United Kingdom; he also appeared as the guest on an edition of the esteemed Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4. In another field altogether, Baaba Maal created the soundtrack in 2008 for the Playstation and X-Box game, Far Cry 2; at the beginning of the decade he had fulfilled a similar function, working with Hans Zimmer, for the Oscar-winning Ridley Scott movie, Black Hawk Down.
In Senegal, the most westerly located of all African nations, Baaba Maal came from humble beginnings. But he has learned and traveled and now speaks and sings of empowerment, enlightenment and peace. He was born in Podor, a town with a population of 6,000, on the banks of the river Senegal that separates his country from Mauritania. (In 2006, returning to his home town, Baaba Maal established the now annual Blues du Fleuve three-day festival in Podor.) Baaba's family is Hal Pulaar, known in the English speaking world as Fulani. He is not from a family of Griots - the hereditary caste of artists and communicators. His father worked in the fields but was also given the honour and responsibility of using songs to call the worshippers to the mosque. Baaba's mother was a musician who sang and wrote her own songs, educating her son in the musical forms of the area and encouraging the young Baaba to value intelligent and thoughtful lyrics.
At the same time Baaba was listening to Black music coming out of America, people like James Brown, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett and Etta James. Later he caught up with Jamaican musicians such as Toots Hibbert, Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff.
Baaba Maal went to school in St. Louis, the original French colonial capital and, on winning an Art scholarship, on to Senegal's modern capital, Dakar. There he joined Asly Fouta, a group of 70 musicians, and spent his time with the group learning as much as he could about the local musical instruments and how they work. On leaving college he toured West Africa with longtime friend, guitarist and Griot, Mansour Seck, soaking up more knowledge: 'It's traditional for young musicians to do that. When you arrive in every village you do a gig. This makes you friendly with all the young people who are in the village. The next day the young people take you to visit the oldest person who knows about the history of the village and the country and about the history of the music.' Baaba then lived in Paris for several years, studying at the Conservatoire des Beaux Arts, with ears still wide open. On arriving back in Senegal Baaba formed his band Daande Lenol (Voice of the People).
As his work with the UN DP signifies, Baaba Maal's vision extends beyond music. He often credits his much-loved mother with giving him a broader and more sympathetic view of the world than many of his contemporaries. It is this influence that led to tunes like A Song For Women on Television, his 2009 album; in March 2011 he plays at London's Royal Festival Hall as part of the WOW (Women of the World) festival, acting as curator for the In Praise of The Female Voice event.
Baaba is a citizen of the developing world who has carved out a place for himself on the global stage, speaking and singing to and for Africa with unprecedented authority. 'I think the musician's role is to give advice, to warn people, and to make them aware of what they might not have thought of themselves,' he says. 'We use melodies and harmonies to make songs enter your mind.'
Funmi Tofowomo
--The art of living and impermanence.
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