IMN : Updates for Baaba Maal

Baaba Maal Discusses His “Tales from the Sahel” Tour

IMN

October 19th, 2011

Baaba Maal Discusses His “Tales from the Sahel” Tour
By Steve Kiviat

Senegalese singer Baaba Maal’s “Tales from the Sahel” show tonight at the Birchmere should prove to be very different from his last local appearance a year and half ago. That gig offered his 13-piece band Daande Lenol adapting songs from his 2009 album Television, which featured programmed beats and guest vocals from members of New York band Brazilian Girls. But tonight, this longtime vocalist—whose high-pitched timbre has led him to be dubbed “The Nightingale“—will be just joined by percussionist Mermans Mosengo, British multi-instrumentalist Jim Palmer, and longtime British music critic and author Chris Salewicz.

Via email, Maal explained that the tour, which includes acoustic music alternating with question-and-answers segments, “is something I have been doing for many years in Africa and is how musicians have performed for centuries. In the west I was invited to give a lecture at the British Museum about five years ago and I brought my guitar along and it’s progressed from there.” The Sahel is a belt-shaped region of grasslands and savannahs that stretches from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia and Eritrea in the East. The college-educated Maal’s father was a nomadic farmer in that region. As a teenager and 20-something Maal toured Senegal and Europe with guitarist and griot Mansour Seck, and they would recount historical tales and perform.

Read the full article here

A Conversation with Baaba Maal

IMN

October 14th, 2011

from Huffington Post

A Conversation with Baaba Maal
By Mike Ragogna

Mike Ragogna: We’re talking with Baaba Maal who is currently on tour in the United States on a series of speaking engagements based on issues facing Africa. Baaba, how are you?

Baaba Maal: I’m doing very well, Mike. Thank you.

MR: That’s great. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re doing on your Tales From The Sahel tour?

BM: The tour is about a concept that is very new to a lot of people, even for the younger generations in Africa, but it’s something that I did in the past and I think it’s a great approach for my music, especially when you hear the kind of music and don’t understand the language but want to know more about the background of the music. We talk about life, we talk about the past, the future…we talk about culture. We also talk about the world and our perspective when it comes to the things that are going on in Africa right now. But it all goes with music. I play music in the middle of all of this to bring pigment to what we’re talking about. At the end of the conversation, we give people a way to ask questions if they want to know more about what we’ve talked about. It’s a new concept for music, it’s more storytelling. It’s not just talking about history or the past, but it’s about life in general.

MR: Nice. You’ve donated tracks to various causes, participated on the tribute album to Fela Kuti, and performed in the South African portion of Live Earth. Have you found that people are actually becoming more educated about the causes you’ve been associated with?

BM: Yeah, I think so. It also helps people realize what kind of musician I am. I am, fortunately, from Africa. and in Africa, being a musician is not someone who is just gonna write a few songs, record them, and put them on records. It had to represent something, and when you represent something, you have to make yourself a part of different projects and causes. I think it was very useful for me to participate in all of this just because it helped to clear up people’s points of view about Africa and what happens in Africa and in the hearts and minds of those in Africa. On some level, we speak universally for those Africans who can’t speak for themselves. Participating in projects like those can help people realize that Africa does have a voice. The thing that is missing sometimes is taking these projects and getting younger generations of Africans to take control. I will be touring, of course, to get this message out, but the next step is to bring these elements and ideas back home to Africa as well.

Read the full article here

Senegalese Superstar Baaba Maal to Perform at MCCC

IMN

October 12th, 2011

from Montgomery News

Senegalese superstar to perform at MCCC
By Walter Ault

Baaba Maal brings songs and tales of his native Senegal and Africa to Montgomery County Community College on Oct. 22
Senegal native Baaba Maal has been defying the odds for many years. As a youngster he was expected to comply with Senegal’s quasi caste system and become a fisherman like his father. Luckily for his millions of fans around the world, the young Baaba instead became obsessed with music and decided to pursue that endeavor at all costs — for a number of years doing it in secret so as not to upset his father.

That was in the 1960s, when Baaba was a teenager. Now, more than 40 years later, the 57-year-old Baaba is internationally known and respected as a singer, songwriter and guitar player, as well as a provocative storyteller.

Baaba is currently touring the U.S. and is slated for an appearance at Montgomery County Community College on Saturday, Oct. 22, in the Blue Bell campus’ Science Center Theater.

When he was just 11 or 12 years old in Senegal, Baaba started playing guitar, he said in a recent interview, adding that by the time he was 15 he was traveling with a band all over West Africa. Baaba added that while traveling he became intrigued by the local stories and myths he heard in numerous villages.

Somewhat magically, the music he was learning, both African and American, and the varied stories he heard, somehow came together to set Baaba’s future course and ultimately made him the multitalented entertainer he is today, as evidenced by his 16 CDs and his dynamic stage shows, where his sound blends reggae, salsa, R & B, soul music and African music.

While still a youngster in Africa, Baaba became familiar with rhythm-and-blues artists like John Lee Hooker, John Coltrane and Lightning Hopkins.

Read the full article here

Albert Rose Presents An Evening With Baaba Maal

IMN

October 11th, 2011

from Just Out

Albert Rose Presents An Evening With Baaba Maal
By Amanda Schurr

Senegalese musician Baaba Maal has been fusing western sounds with the traditional beats, melodies and textures of West Africa for almost two decades, and his live shows are the stuff of legend: transcendent, authentic, uniting. (Check the DVD of his 1998 performance at London’s Royal Festival Hall for proof.)

Variety says he’s “a marvelous performer to watch.” But Maal has also become known as a tireless humanitarian, a youth emissary for the United Nation’s Development Program and a vocal crusader about the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, the growing role of women on the continent and youth-based initiatives to help Africa move into the new millennium.

To that end, Maal will be sitting with music journalist and author Chris Salewicz (The Sunday Times, The Independent) tomorrow night to discuss his experiences growing up in Africa and traveling the world, issues facing the continent and other international headlines.

Of course, there will be (unforgettable) music — the UK’s Guardian hails him as “one of the finest singers in the world.”
Long story short, “Tales from the Sahel: An Evening with Baaba Maal” promises to be a very special, intimate affair. Highly recommended.

Read the full article here

Baaba Maal Speaks on Issues Facing Africa and Beyond

IMN

October 1st, 2011

-from Helion Magazine_

Baaba Maal Speaks on Issues Facing Africa and Beyond

It’s been roughly a year since Baaba Maal toured the U.S. for the promotion of his latest album, Television. Maal is now returning this October to headline a series of speaking dates moderated by acclaimed music journalist and author, Chris Salewicz. The speeches will revolve around his childhood experiences in Africa and traveling the world, views on the issues facing Africa and the African Diaspora, and other current issues. Baaba will also entertain with pieces of his music alongside multi-instrumentalist, Jim Palmer.

Senegalese master musician, Baaba Maal, has been one of the most influential musicians to come out of Africa. He has been making music for his worldwide fans for nearly ten decades. Baaba is known for his mixture of western melodies and traditional West African beats and his fiery vocals. The critical acclaimed artist continues to solidify his role as a seminal artist in world music.

Baaba has taken his talents beyond music and dived into the realms of a humanitarian spokesperson through his role as youth emissary for the United Nations Developmental Program. He has also spoken on AIDS/HIV in Africa, the growing role of women on the continent, and his support of youth-based initiatives to help Africa move into the new millennium.

The upcoming dates of speeches will give U.S. audiences the incredible experience to hear Baaba’s worldly insight and knowledge.

Baaba Maal Announces US Speaking Tour

IMN

September 30th, 2011

from worldmusic.net

Baaba Maal Announces US Speaking Tour

This October, Senegalese master musician Baaba Maal will be visiting the US to headline a series of speaking dates moderated by renowned music journalist and author Chris Salewicz (The Sunday Times, The Independent, Bob Marley: The Untold Story) to discuss his personal experiences growing up in Africa, traveling the world, and his views on issues facing Africa and the African diaspora. During the course of the evening, Baaba will be playing some songs alongside multi-instrumentalist Jim Palmer. This will be a unique and intimate event, an evening full of surprises.

One of the true stars to rise from the African continent, Baaba Maal has been making music for the world to enjoy for nearly two decades. Renowned for his fiery vocal performances and his musical fusion of western sounds with the traditional beats and melodies of West Africa, he has earned immense critical acclaim and has continually reinforced his role as a seminal artist in the world music arena. His work has also extended beyond music and into the realms of humanitarian spokesperson through his role as youth emissary for the United Nation’s Development Program and his outspoken stances on HIV/AIDS in Africa, the growing role of women on the continent and his support of youth-based initiatives to help Africa move into the new millennium.

It’s been nearly a year since Baaba Maal toured the US in support of his latest album, Television,’ which CNN called ‘fearless and all-encompassing…fresh yet timeless.’ This upcoming series of dates will give US audiences a different experience – the chance to hear Baaba’s worldly insight and knowledge.

‘Tales From The Sahel’ dates:

5 Oct: Yoshi’s, Oakland, CA
6 Oct: Yoshi’s, Oakland, CA
7 Oct: Rio Theatre, Santa Cruz, CA
8 Oct: Univ of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
9 Oct: Anthology, San Diego, CA
11 Oct: Triple Door, Seattle, WA
13 Oct: L2 Arts & Cultural Center, Denver, CO
15 Oct: Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis, MN
16 Oct: Old Town School of Folk Music, Chicago, IL
17 Oct: The Ark, Ann Arbor, MI
18 Oct: Smart’s Opera House, Nelsonville, OH
19 Oct: Birchmere, Alexandria, VA
21 Oct: Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at PACE, New York, NY
22 Oct: Science Center Theatre, Blue Bell, PA
23 Oct: ICA Theatre, Boston, MA

Read full article here

INTERVIEW Baaba Maal on African Women in Music

IMN

June 15th, 2011

from Guardian (UK)

“I’m so proud these days to see more and more women are in the frontline in music.”

In a recent Guardian interview, musician and campaigner Baaba Maal comments on the barriers still faced by women in Africa.

Baaba Maal: Fragments of unity on Africa Day

IMN

June 10th, 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…

To read more click here

Baaba Maal in South Africa for Africa Day Celebrations

IMN

May 13th, 2011

from Times LIVE

Baaba Maal in South Africa for Africa Day celebrations

Senegalese legend Baaba Maal will be in Johannesburg for the Africa Day concert.

Indisputably one of the African continents most important performers, Maal will be joined on stage by guitarist and vocalist Habib Koite of Mali.

Other notable appearances for the 48th anniversary, Africa Day are Olufemi from Nigeria, Namibia’s Elemotho, South Africa’s very own hip-hop maestro Tumi and the Volume, pioneer of the electrifying Durban Sound, Professor, and the soulful Uju.

For the Africa Day show, Maal will deliver a special acoustic performance, giving audiences an exciting opportunity to witness the diversity of his showmanship.

Africa Day marks the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (now known as the African Union) on May 25 1963. The organization’s objectives were to promote unity between African nations, and provide a support mechanism for liberation movements of colonized African nations.

Chaired by then emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, the opening of the OAU was attended by the 32 African states that had attained independence at that time.

Read the full article here

REVIEW Baaba Maal at the Hollywood Bowl (LA Times)

IMN

June 23rd, 2010

From the LA Times

Pop music review: Baaba Maal at the Hollywood Bowl
By Reed Johnson

No continent has parented more musical children than Africa, and its progeny were out in force on Father’s Day at the Hollywood Bowl.

Never mind that many of these creative offspring — reggae, blues, gospel, beat-happy electronica — make their primary homes in distant parts of the planet. Sunday’s ebullient concert, headlined by the veteran Senegalese sonic nomad Baaba Maal, reminded us that in today’s digitalized global village of file-sharing and YouTube, African music lives everywhere.

Everywhere, at least, where rhythm rules.

For gotta-dance purists, there was the straightforward, gospel-infused reggae of Playing for Change, a fine collective of vocalists and musicians assembled by Grammy-winning producer Mark Johnson to promote musical connectedness and cross-cultural understanding.

Maal, resplendently attired in traditional West African garb, led his large, virtuosic band on a joyful romp through songs old (“Mbolo”) and new (“Television”), snaking his hips and switching idioms with ease. It was an Afro-pop master class by one of the genre’s undisputed stars.

Earlier, the Saharan “guitar-poets” Tinariwen held the stage with a captivating set built around simple, trance-inducing melodies and blissful harmonies. So euphoric are the band’s repetitive riffs that one woman in the audience danced on her crutches. “They made the lame walk!” my box-seat next-door neighbor observed.

To read the article online click here

Photo Credit: Anne Cusack, Los Angeles Times / June 19, 2010

Bonnaroo 2010: Baaba Maal In Concert

IMN

June 14th, 2010

From npr.com

A singer-songwriter from Senegal, Baaba Maal fuses popular music from around the world with the traditional sounds of West African griots. It’s an approach that’s made Maal a global star and won him widespread acclaim in the U.S., where he’s just released a collaboration with the dance band Brazilian Girls, titled Television. Still, for all his worldwide reach and musical invention, Maal’s music remains rooted in Africa: He sings in his native Pular tongue, while rallying around causes near and dear to the people of his home region. Hear Maal perform live at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tenn.

Photo: Shantel Mitchell / NPR

REVIEW Baaba Maal at Fillmore New York

IMN

May 10th, 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

INTERVIEW Baaba Maal Brings His Global Sound to UCLA’s Royce Hall

IMN

April 22nd, 2010

From the Los Angeles Times
By Reed Johnson

Musical inspiration can strike Baaba Maal in any place, at any time.

It might happen on the Paris Metro, where he sometimes hears echoes of African drum beats in the rumbling of the train cars. Or he could be in his native environs, on the banks of the Senegal River, listening for hidden melodies in the sound of the wind and the rain.

“Just silently in my head I sing songs, on the top of rhythm,” said the 56-year-old vocalist-guitarist.

For much of his adult life, Maal, who’ll perform Saturday at UCLA’s Royce Hall, has been a man in motion. Years ago, he spurned his parents’ hopes of him becoming a doctor or lawyer by leaving Senegal to study music in France. There, he began formulating a polyglot, polyrhythmic alloy of traditional African and Western sounds, later folding in Caribbean, Latin American and other textures.

Since his recording career took off in the 1980s, he has traveled the world, musically as well as physically, collaborating with other sonic nomads (Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno) and lending his work to the soundtrack of Ridley Scott’s “Black Hawk Down.”

“There is always one moment in your life, long time ago, that makes you dream a beautiful dream to be a musician and travel the world,” he said. “And to fight to get back that moment in your life, I think, is a very beautiful thing.”

His latest album, last year’s “Television,” continues Maal’s creative peregrinations. One track, “International,” fittingly begins with a female voice reciting a list of cities — “Belgrade, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, New York, Dakar” — in the cool, slightly robotic tone of an airport terminal announcer.

But there’s nothing detached or generically globalized about Maal’s artistry. He insists on keeping his stylistic options as open as his passport, moving nimbly between traditional African acoustic instrumentation and electronic arrangements, as well as among French, English and the Fula language of Western Africa. Wherever he happens to land, he never gives the impression that he’s merely passing through.

That tendency is alive and well with “Television,” for which Maal and his bandmates teamed up with vocalist Sabina Sciubba and keyboardist Didi Gutman of Brazilian Girls, the frisky New York City-based alt-electronica-dance band. It’s a dramatic change from, say, “Missing You (Mi Yeewnii),” his acoustic, resolutely rootsy 2001 release.

“I want them to discover something they did not expect me to do, because I don’t want people to put me in just one place and to say, ‘This is how we want Baaba Maal to be always,’” he said.

Read the article here

Baaba Maal Music Festival Highlights Education in Senegal's Fouta Region

IMN

January 1st, 2010

Senegalese musician Baaba Maal is using an annual music festival to focus on education in the country’s remote northern regions.

At Baaba Maal’s fourth annual “Festival les Blues du Fleuve,” musicians from around West Africa gathered along the Senegal River to play traditional rhythms and modern beats before thousands of spectators. But they were also there to draw attention to issues of education – a topic of increasing relevance to people in northern Senegal.

As one of Africa’s most acclaimed musicians and a youth ambassador for the United Nations Development Program, Maal is using the music festival, in his hometown of Podor, to talk about the future of the region’s children.

“I think education is one of the most important gifts that we can send to the next generation, in order to pass to the next generation, because I believe that without education the next generation in Africa will not be able to understand what’s going on in the whole world and how to go into it and how to exchange ideas, how to use the modern way of communicating to be part of the world. I think education is really, really a key to develop the mind and to develop the spirit and to be free for a lot of things,” he said.

Baaba Maal: A Griot In The Electronic Age

IMN

September 10th, 2009

from npr.org

In West Africa, Europe and the world-music scene, the beloved Senegalese singer-songwriter Baaba Maal is a superstar. He’s long been known for bridging the griot tradition of West African bards with popular music from around the globe and his newest album is no exception. Television is the product of an unlikely collaboration with the Brooklyn-based dance and electronica outfit Brazilian Girls.

Maal has a notoriously open mind when it comes to sonic possibilities. Both lyrically and musically, his songs are indelibly African (most, after all, are in his native Pular tongue), and many directly address the gamut of political concerns south of the Sahara. The fusion of traditional African and contemporary Western musical styles enriches, rather than dilutes, his griot heritage.

“When you sing songs that talk about Africa, it’s not just the rhythm or the harmonies or the melody or the notes; it’s also the pictures that you have in your head,” Maal says. “And sometimes, the African instruments can’t bring these pictures, because our instruments aren’t built like that. But with the keyboard, someone working with the keyboard can bring you some sound that just reminds you of … the movement of your people.”

Television’s title track is a disarmingly carefree tune about the serious implications of the growth of mass communications in Africa.

“This is an instrument we can use to make good things,” Maal says. “But at the same time, it’s very dangerous, because if people seem to believe that everything that passes through television is true, it falls down into the hands of bad politicians. [That’s] not good for the continent.”

Maal is active politically: He’s championed female empowerment in Africa, HIV/AIDS awareness and African debt relief by Western creditors.

“I think African artists in general, and musicians in particular, who get the chance to travel and to have their voice very loud, should use that opportunity to help the leaders from Africa to understand what to do,” he says. “And also, all the people who make the decisions around the world [need] to know exactly what Africa is expecting from them.”