Baaba Maal: Fragments of unity on Africa Day

Friday June 10, 2011

From Mali & Guardian Online

Fragments of Unity on Africa Day
By Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon

“Afrique, Afrique, Afrique!” cried Tumi Molekane of Tumi and the Volume, ending an electric hip-hop set at the Africa Day celebrations in Newtown last Saturday.

In his Anglicised French he could have been shouting “A freak, a freak, a freak!” because the day was characterised by both a celebration of African unity and a playful confusion about what this means.

The concert was hosted by the City of Johannesburg, SABC2 and the French Embassy, among others. Newtown Park had an urban intimacy, cradled as it is by the highway, billboards and the Workers’ Museum.

Throughout the afternoon a thin stream of people braving the winter cold gradually filled the park. The Mail & Guardian spoke to Senegalese musician Baaba Maal, one of the main acts, before the concert.

“For me African cities like Johannesburg, Abijan, Nairobi [and] Dakar are like places where all the tradition, and the people who grow up with traditional culture in their lives, came together without any plan,” said Maal.

“They create a new style of living because they are influenced by the cities, by the oldest people – and it’s kind of a new birth. But the tradition is always inside it; it never goes, it tries to survive and become something quite new.”

The concert, capturing this spirit, ebbed and flowed through short sets of 20 minutes each. Styles ranged across the Sowetan punk of Ree-Burth, the mbaqanga of the Mahotella Queens, the electro-blues of Toya, the kwaito of Professor and Malian folk of Habib Koite, among a half-dozen others. This diversity of regions and generations gave the day an extraordinary eclecticism…

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