Sitting on a sofa of their supervisor’s workplace, three of the oldest members of Senegal’s Orchestra Baobab, the legendary Afro-Cuban and west African fusion group, banter like household.
A number of evenings later, their guitar and saxophone melodies conjured the identical convivial chemistry, electrifying a Dakar nightclub and getting partygoers dancing cha-cha steps and swaying their hips because the band has completed so many occasions in its half-century historical past.
The much-loved orchestra, which blends regional Wolof griot music, Congolese rumba, Senegalese mbalax, jazz and different traditions by means of an Afro-Cuban filter, launched “Made in Senegal”, its first album of latest songs in almost 10 years, on October 23.
Just like the mighty baobab tree it’s named for, Orchestra Baobab stays standing regardless of its age, thanks partly to a brand new era of musicians slowly changing its iconic veterans.
Two teams of the oldest then youngest members of the nine-person ensemble sat down with AFP to elucidate the enduring magic.
Within the band’s newest music “you may sense a freshness, one thing new, one thing distinctive, one thing individuals have not actually heard from the founders earlier than”, rhythm guitarist Yahya Fall, 76, informed AFP.
The group’s joyful swinging sound, produced throughout guitars, drums, saxophones and vocals, alternately rollicks and sways, at occasions extremely energetic and at others seducing listeners with lilting refrains.
The handful of latest members, principally of their 30s and 40s, say they aspire to maintain the band’s historic soul and core sound, including solely a touch of their private flavour.
Vocalist Korka Dieng, who began singing with Baobab in 2023, jolted the group into the twenty first century as its first and solely lady member.
The 44-year-old mentioned she and the opposite youthful musicians every deliver their very own contact, however attempt “to protect the originality that introduced the legendary orchestra to the place it’s right now”.
The younger members “will have the ability to guarantee Baobab lasts a full century”, 73-year-old percussionist Mountaga “Taga” Koite, the band’s final remaining unique member, informed AFP with a twinkle in his eye.
The orchestra, which dominated Dakar’s membership scene and airwaves after its delivery in 1970, ultimately went on hiatus solely to reemerge within the early 2000s and obtain worldwide fame.
Trombone and tenor saxophonist Wilfried Zinsou, a part of the brand new guard at 48, described the orchestra as a nationwide treasure, touring throughout Europe and elsewhere when not performing in Dakar.
“Individuals view Senegal by means of us, we deliver Senegalese tradition with us. These unfamiliar with Senegal see the nation by means of Orchestra Baobab,” he informed AFP.
The group is even planning a live performance sequence outdoors their city stronghold of Dakar, having by no means gone on tour in Senegal’s areas, orchestra chief Thierno Koite, brother of “Taga”, informed a press convention on October 20.
– Not simply ‘old fashioned’ –
On a latest Sunday evening in Dakar, Baobab performed the well-known venue Simply For You.
Mates and {couples} swayed at their tables till a chronic wail of the saxophone in Baobab anthem “Utrus Horas” despatched a shock by means of the room.
First two ladies jumped from their seats to bop, earlier than others rushed to the entrance of the corridor, swinging and stepping to the sultry rhythm.
“I danced to Orchestra Baobab at age 15-16 and nonetheless right now”, 62-year-old fan Moustapha Samb informed AFP, describing the group as “a monument, it represents reminiscence and resilience” for Senegal.
Listeners are “beginning to realise that Orchestra Baobab is not simply old-school. There’s a new era”, vocalist Dieng informed AFP.
Of the 12 songs in “Made in Senegal”, roughly half are newly composed, and the overwhelming majority haven’t but appeared in a Baobab album.
Among the many combine is Zinsou’s new composition “Gorgorlou”, a Wolof time period for an individual who works onerous simply to get by.
“Wida”, composed by lead guitarist “Bolero” Lagratte, 37, in the meantime references the historic slave port of the identical identify in his native Benin and its “door of no return”.
Lagratte, who has been within the band the longest of all its new musicians, changed founding member Barthelemy Attisso, who died in 2021.
A few of Orchestra Baobab’s most iconic musicians, akin to singer-percussionists Balla Sidibe and Rudy Gomis, died within the early 2020s, not lengthy after famed saxophonist Issa Cissokho.
The group’s final album of latest songs, 2017’s “Tribute to Ndiouga Dieng”, itself honoured a fallen founding vocalist.
From the supervisor’s workplace the place the three Baobab veteran members had gathered, Koite, the founding percussionist, enumerated how every new musician had impeccably stuffed one other’s sneakers.
“For me, nothing modified,” he mentioned.
Even right now, “as quickly as Baobab’s music begins, individuals rise up to bop”, he mentioned.
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