REVIEW Baaba Maal at Fillmore New York

Monday May 10, 2010

A Worldwide Commute From Senegal in a Jubilant Arc
From The New York Times
By Jon Pareles

The Senegalese bandleader Baaba Maal told his audience at the Fillmore New York on Friday night that an African concert is a “journey into Africa,” one that touches on geography, history, culture and politics. “Everything is inside of it,” he said. Yet the concert was as much a journey outside Africa as within it. Mr. Maal has made himself a restless musical citizen of the world.

He is proudly rooted in his hometown, Podor, in northern Senegal, and in the culture of the Fulani, a nomadic group that is spread across West Africa. His band includes his lifelong mentor, the blind singer and guitarist Mansour Seck; although Mr. Seck is elderly, his raised voice easily rivaled Mr. Maal’s when they shared a duet. Mr. Maal’s lyrics — in his native Pulaar, French and English — celebrate Africa’s beauty, praise its historical and cultural figures and preach about issues like clean water, war and women’s rights.

But Mr. Maal makes party music above all, and the concert was a long, jubilant, accelerating arc. He started with the meditative acoustic guitar picking of “Tindo Quando” but soon brought in his entire band for grooves that weren’t only from his home.

His music, like his touring schedule, commutes worldwide from Senegal. A new song about his hometown, “Podor Assiko,” drew on Trinidadian carnival soca. “African Woman” was straightforward salsa, complete with horn-section keyboard sounds and Latin timbales. “Dakar Moon” had an Afro-Cuban bolero beat; the English guitarist Barry Reynolds, who wrote the song with Mr. Maal, sat in.

For his most recent album, “*Television*” (Palm Pictures), Mr. Maal collaborated with Brazilian Girls, an internationalist electronica and dance-music group from New York City, and the music dipped into club and Caribbean rhythms. At times Mr. Maal’s collaborations have led to incompatible hybrids, but his own band never lets him down. Onstage they seized back his newer songs from computers and studio effects, relying on hands, feet and Mr. Maal’s own clear, perpetually hopeful voice.

The band features West African instruments like talking drums and hoddu, a percussively plucked lute, alongside electric ones. And while many of the underlying rhythms came from across the Atlantic, the band gave them an unmistakable Senegalese makeover: an extra layer of syncopation, in bursts of breakneck double-time and triple-time percussion that rocketed the songs ahead.

Mr. Maal introduced one song, “Sarala,” with a brief lecture on the ancient Malian empire and a dedication to educating the children of Africa. Then he invited people to dance with the band onstage, until there was barely room for the musicians. The party and the mission were merged.

Click here to read the article.
Photo courtesy of Brian Harkin for The New York Times

Dakar Moon	3:15	Baaba Maal
Television	7:07	Baaba Maal

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