Weekly > Features
Baaba Maal
It’s early June and an excited crowd of Muso’s, journalists and a smattering of lucky fans are gathering in the basement gallery of Phonica Records, where a photo exhibition was set to celebrate the 50 years of Island Records.
The exhibition features famous promo shots and album artwork of all the artists that have graced the recod label over it’s fifty year history. In a time when a lot of doom and gloom is surrounding the industry it’s refreshing to be able to talk about a real success story that has given a lot of people a vast amount of memories and records to cherish.
Despite the brilliant exhibition though the crowd have a buzz about them as this is a chance to get up close and personal with one of Africa’s leading musicians, the Senegalese star Baaba Maal.
He’s here to promote his brand new album Television, the latest long player in a career that has seen him release albums such as Nomad Soul, On The Road, Mansourseck and Missing You (mi yeewnii).
Before he takes to the stage the audience are treated to a video of Television, the film gives the perfect intriduction to his mesmerising new album and one that I would heartily recommend to any World Music fans out there.
At 7.30pm though he promptly arrives on stage accompanied by two other guitarists. He starts off by giving a little background into the recording of the album, how he had written in on his trip to Brazil, explaining that it was very important for him to sing about what’s happening today, in his country but also in the world, especially about poverty.
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Add to favouritesHis music is very much inspired by the traditional Senegal sounds, with a pinch of pop on some of the more dance based tracks. The downside is that he’s only here to perform four tracks and at 7.50pm the set is over with, still the crowd are appreciative, it isn’t often that you get chance to see a living legend in such a venue and once they’ve finished swaying and dancing along to his music, you get the impression that for some of these people in attendance tonight this will be a night to live long in the memory.
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