These recordings from 1970 and 1971 are revealing. They were born in the early days of Africanisation in Dakar, Senegal, when French still ruled the language and the culture. This music is defiantly African, rooted in the ancient traditions of the Wolof language and the ancient kingdoms of the region, but also modern, urban, and somewhat revolutionary for its time. Led by singer Laye M'Boup, and featuring notables like Thione Seck and Medioune Diallo, the group has a heavily Latin sound featuring jazz- and blues-inspired horn charts, African vocal lines, and--for the time--some of the most outside guitar licks this side of Jimi Hendrix. Recorded in live sessions (without an audience) in the Baobab club in Dakar, the pieces run the gamut from rumba-driven dance tunes to some of the weirdest, underwater-sounding soul psychedelia ever to emerge from Africa. It may have taken these recordings almost three decades to reach a wider audience, but they are destined to be remembered as classics of African's golden age of pop. --Louis Gibson
It's the only Orchestra Baobab album featuring original lead singer Laye M'Boup, who died in a car accident in 1974, but the rest of the lineup features virtually the entire band that was a major force in Senegalese music for the next 15 years . http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,375546,00.htm
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Thanks to Sam Sam The Mystery Man
4/2/11
orchestra baobab
These recordings from 1970 and 1971 are revealing. They were born in the early days of Africanisation in Dakar, Senegal, when French still ruled the language and the culture. This music is defiantly African, rooted in the ancient traditions of the Wolof language and the ancient kingdoms of the region, but also modern, urban, and somewhat revolutionary for its time. Led by singer Laye M'Boup, and featuring notables like Thione Seck and Medioune Diallo, the group has a heavily Latin sound featuring jazz- and blues-inspired horn charts, African vocal lines, and--for the time--some of the most outside guitar licks this side of Jimi Hendrix. Recorded in live sessions (without an audience) in the Baobab club in Dakar, the pieces run the gamut from rumba-driven dance tunes to some of the weirdest, underwater-sounding soul psychedelia ever to emerge from Africa. It may have taken these recordings almost three decades to reach a wider audience, but they are destined to be remembered as classics of African's golden age of pop. --Louis Gibson
It's the only Orchestra Baobab album featuring original lead singer Laye M'Boup, who died in a car accident in 1974, but the rest of the lineup features virtually the entire band that was a major force in Senegalese music for the next 15 years . http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/store/artist/album/0,,375546,00.htm
...
Thanks to Sam Sam The Mystery Man
