• CDNOW Interview
• CBC Global Village Audio Postcard from Baaba
• Interview with Bob Doran
• Interview with Troy Montague - Dirty Linen Magazine- February/March 1996

Interview 1: by Bob Doran (all right reserved) 

Baaba Maal is one of the new generation of African musicians who have taken the traditional rhythms and "folk" music of the continent and reinterpreted them using modern technology. 

Maal comes from the Fouta Toro region of Senegal in West Africa, where he began his musical training. In his culture, a musical career was once out of the question for all but the Griot caste, it was an inherited role. This did not stop him. He joined Asly Fouta Orchestra, a traditional music academy in Dakar and won a scholarship to study in France at Ecole des Beaux Arts. 

He has managed to combine his knowledge of the traditional with what he has learned traveling the world to create a modern blend, a new sound. On Sidiki the opening cut of his Firin' In Fouta album, synthesizers and electric guitars merge with the ancient beat of logs pounding grain. On Gorel, a Senegalese children's circle game chant is accompanied by a driving technobeat and a talking drum. The strong voice of Baaba Maal cuts through it all, just as the voice of his father, a muezzin, (the Moslem crier who calls the faithful to prayer five times a day,) cut through the sounds of the marketplace. 

Maal's songs speak of issues facing Africa today: the changing role of women, the need to work towards self reliance, the importance of settling old tribal conflicts, and the connection between the past and the future. 

We spoke when he called me from London prior to embarking on a world tour in 1995 to promote the Mango release, Firin' In Fouta. 

Q: Could you tell me about growing up in Podor? 

Baaba: 

Podor is a nice town. It's at the north of Senegal near the river. The town faces the other country that is Mauritania. It is a very cultural town, because at the beginning it was closest stop when you come from the Sahara and also when you come from the south to go to the north part of Africa. It was just at the middle, and so it's where a lot of cultures of West Africa come together. 

Q: What did your family do there? What did your father do? 

Baaba: 

My father was a muezzin at the mosque. He was singing and calling people to come to pray. He was very involved in the religion. 

Q: So his involvement in music was mostly through religion? 

Baaba: 

Yes, it's like when you talk about gospel in America. People used to make music when there was a religion party, a ceremony in the night and they would be singing the whole night. 

Q: Did your mother sing too? 

Baaba: 

She sang when she was very young. We had some kinds of popular music that everyone can do, especially the young people when they'd finish their work at the fields. They'd meet and would sing all night talking about the life of young people, about their hopes, about what they learn in their families. 

Q: Did your parents teach you music? 

Baaba: 

I learned some from my mother who taught me the songs. With my father, I'd just stay near him and listen and try to find how he did his music. 

Q: On your album in the song Salimoun, you speak of the wisdom of the mothers. What did you learn from your mother? 

Baaba: 

I think that I learned music. And also you learn recommendations that you can use in your life. When you travel, you all the time remember what your mother teach you. You know in the African family the mother has a big role to play because the father is outside in the fields or going to work. And the mother is all the time in the house making food for the children or for the whole family and educating the children. That's why a lot of things that you use in the world, you learn from your mother, more from your mother than from your father. 

Q: You became a musician even though in the traditional caste system that is a role for those born as griots. I wonder is the system breaking down? 

Baaba: 

Yeah, the system is going little by little because a lot of things are changing in Africa now. And the money brings it because in the beginning the griots would play just for the families of the kings. When the people have a big ceremony they'd come and play for everyone, but it was mostly for just one family. Every family of griots has some family that they follow in life and they sing about the relationship between them and the other family. Now this thing is finished because of the things changing in Africa. When I started singing it was a big problem because the (old system) was not totally finished and they could not understand how someone who is a not a Griot could go and sing. It was the young generation who accepted me because they go like me to their school and they understand that if you have the opportunity to be a singer or do another work, even though you don't belong to the caste you can do it, because the whole world is going like that. 

Q: Tell me about how you put together your album, Fire In Fouta. I heard that you returned to Podor to record some village music. 

Baaba: 

I worked with a producer on some songs that we were planning to put in the album. After that I went to the north and organized a big party, a party where all the people who lived in the town, who were not professional musicians but they use the music for everything in their life. We invited them and they played all the different kinds of music that we have there. They play also in the music we were putting in the album, and they do it so naturally because all this kind of new beat that people say is modern, we have a reference of that kind of music in our traditional music. We have something that looks like it, like the rap music, we have something in traditional Senegalese music called tasso that is close to rap music. 

Q: In the first song Sidiki , in the middle of the song there is a rhythm that sounds like pounding. What is that? 

Baaba: 

It's the women in the north of Senegal at Podor who sometimes when they make the food with their millet pounding, they do it with music. At every moment of their life, these people use the music to do their work. We used samples of that in the album. 

Q: What are your plans for the future? 

Baaba: 

Right now I'm still working on promotion for my album. So I am making a tour. We are planning to make some tapes for Africa in traditional music and also to make an African tour, because for a long time we haven't done that. We tour in Europe and America and the rest of the world but not in Africa. 

Q: So you will record material just for Africa? 

Baaba: 

Yes, sometimes, yes. 

Q: How do you feel about your music being categorized here as "world music"? 

Baaba: 

I don't care. I did not like that name "world music" in the beginning. I think that African music must get more respect than to be put in a ghetto like that. We have something to give to others. When you look to how African music is built, when you understand this kind of music, you can understand that a lot of all this modern music that you are hearing in the world has similarities to African music. It's like the origin of a lot of kinds of music. 

Q: It's the basis of jazz... 

Baaba: 

Yes, jazz and blues and rap music itself. As I said the tasso is the real rap music. 

Q: What is the Yela rhythm? 

Baaba: 

All kinds of music comes from the big empires like of the empire of Ghana, it was before the empire of Mali. At the beginning the people were using calabashes to make the rhythm. Women were singing the songs and sometimes men brought the music from them and told about the history of the village or the history of the society. Little by little we put in the African traditional guitar and after that we put the western guitar. In the 1960s years we put the western guitar and the music changed from its original way to something that was more popular, that everyone can use. 

Q: Is there a connection between Yela and Reggae? 

Baaba: 

Yeah, they look close to the same because the way the Reggae music is arranged, the traditional African music that we call Yela is like that. The construction of the music itself looks close to the same. When you put a Reggae song in the villages, the women who used to dance the Yela, they still dance it like Yela because they feel that it is the same. 

Q: Your friend and collaborator, the Griot Mansour Seck, is he of the same family as (the other popular Senegalese musicians,) Thione Seck and Coumba Gawlo Seck? 

Baaba: 

It's the same name and the origins must be the same, but it's not the same family because it's not the same language they are talking. Mansour is Fula the others are Wolof. But people say that all the griots come from the same family. 

Q: And Mansour is your family's Griot? 

Baaba: 

Yes, his father was a friend to my father. 

Q: Do you see your role as sort of the "new Griot"? 

Baaba: 

Yes, it is true, because we are at the center of African society like the old griots who were at the center of the old society. The people live with our music, they listen more to what we are saying than to what politicians are saying. This is the role that the older griots were playing in the African kingdoms at the beginning. And now this is our role. 

Q: The song Nilou talks about the devaluation of the African franc but also about the Western intervention in African affairs.  

Baaba: 

Yes, when something happens in my society I have to talk about it. Because every different tribe finds their solution, so I try let people understand what's happening and there is a solution when they face that problem. We also understand that it is not new in Africa, this intervention, especially in Senegal. It's not new that the French have to decide at every moment of our lives what's going to be the future of our continent in a lot of things, in the economical things and the political things. But as musicians we understand that now we must face that and know that the future of Africa must belong only to the people who live in Africa. They must work for that. Especially after this year where many people on this continent who have nothing, who are very poor and have nothing to bring to the world, every time they are holding out their hands asking for something from the others. There is a new generation of musicians, of people like me who are ready to bring their ideas. They know they are African, they know that is their personality, but also they know that they can bring something to the world, something that belongs to them. 

Q: What is it you want to bring to the world? What message do you have for the world? 

Baaba: 

The way of living that is very African, I think the people lose it in the world. When you come to an African concert you see people on the stage with clothes with a lot of color, dancing, singing, smiling. This is the real self of Africa. With all our problems people are still living together. It's true we have some examples that are not very good, like Rwanda, but in villages like in Senegal, and other parts of Africa, people are living together, getting together, working and helping each other and have a very good harmony between them. The notion of family is still there. Respect that you must give to your father and your mother or someone who is older than you. All these things we are getting from the music and we see that the rest of the world is losing the importance of the human being. It's still there in most countries in Africa. 

Q: So that is part of what you say with your music? 

Baaba: 

We talk about all the problems in the world like racism. Sometimes the problems between people come because people don't try to know the other. They don't try to understand the other. In Africa we don't have that. When you live in one village you go out in the street, and you have to look after everyone. When someone needs food and you have it, you have to eat it with him. It's very important because one day you will want something like that. 

Q: In your new music you are combining the traditional with the modern. Do you see that as a danger to the traditional music? 

Baaba: 

It's not a danger because in the world now we know that we have something that is very important, traditional African music that is talking just to the African society because they understand it. They live with it, they grow up with this kind of music. But now when you play music you play not just for only your own society, you play for the whole world. The world is one planet, it's like one big village. You must show what you learn from your house and combine it with what is your experience in life. People travel, they go off to school and know what's happening in the other part of the world, they look at the television, they read the newspaper, and everyone is very involved in what's happening on the other side of the world. You must be an African talking to the rest of the world, or an American talking to the rest of the world. 

Interview 2) by Troy Montague - Dirty Linen Magazine - February/March 1996

When Baaba Maal decided to become a professional musician, he faced severe disapproval from within his West African community. "It was especially difficult for me as I had not only graduated from school but was studying at university," explained the Senegalese singer, speaking in French from his record company's London office. "People just couldn't understand particularly as musicians had such a hard time making a living." Maal persisted, and is currently among the most sought-after and exciting performers on the World Music circuit.

At the WOMAD Festival in England this summer he put on a magnificently choreographed and high-energy performance. Maal's penetrating, bittersweet voice dipped and soared above intricate cross-rhythms and powerful grooves laid down by his band,Daande Lenol. The interplay between the singer and the musicians and two male dancers was as delightful as it was dynamic.

Maal's stage presence was nothing short of mesmerizing throughout. Baaba Maal was at first suspicious of the record-industry label "World Music." "I thought it might be a passing phase, a fashion for people tired of other musics," he explained. "And it made me feel awkward because it seemed a dismissive term to apply to the Third World and to Africa especially -- an underestimation of music built on very solid, even ancient, foundations."

However, as the interest proved enduring and the admiration profound, Maal has happily revised that earlier assessment. "It was a matter of understanding and mastering issues concerning the music's presentation and production to avoid `denaturalizing' it, but rather bringing it out in such a way that somebody unfamiliar with a particular kind of music can still genuinely appreciate it, and be moved by it. For me World Music now is the name given to music with which all people can identify -- be they white or black, African, American or European."

Yet for all his global acclaim and aspirations, Maal is determined to stay close to his ethnic origins. He is a Peulh (also known as Fulani or Tukulor), a minority nomadic people scattered over various West African countries -- northern Senegal, and parts of Mali, Mauritania, Guinea, and Niger. "It is the music of this people that I play. When I write, I think of these nomads who have had a common culture for so long. And in turn these people find themselves in what I sing."

Maal's upbringing is of enduring inspiration to him. "I find a source of wisdom in my education. I grew up freely, yet at the same time very attentive to the education of my parents, and of older people. I come from a rural milieu, where the family hierarchy and notions of respect for your parents, your neighbors, your work, your home, elders, the environment, life itself are of crucial importance. And there was a religious education   based on Islam, but also on other religions that existed before Islam.

Such values have enabled African societies to find an equilibrium."Peulh society, like many others on the continent, is divided up into a series of groups and sub-groups according to birth and inherited trades and professions. Among the latter are the griots or jalis -- a caste whose duty is to preserve the oral and musical culture of the people, and of the nobility. Baaba Maal's father was a noble and had his personal griot, whose son -- Mansour Seck -- became Baaba's own lifelong musical companion. "Each member of a sub-group is linked by friendship to the members of other sub-groups who are of the same age," said Maal. "Mansour was, for a long time, the griot for my group."

"Everything concerning our Peulh culture and traditions was obtained through him," Maal continued. "Either he told it to us or he invited us to his home, and in the evening his father or his mother or his uncles would recount our origins and our history, and tell us proverbs to live our lives by. When I started to sing, Mansour's family accepted me as their son as well -- so that all they taught him they taught me, too. When Mansour started to play an instrument he would accompany me; and when I decided to launch my musical career, so did he. We have always played together, and he is always on tour with me."

Influences from further afield came to shape Baaba Maal's artistic and cultural development after he moved to the port city of Dakar to pursue an academic career. Latin music, from Cuba especially, had been popular for many years in the nightclubs and dancehalls of the increasingly cosmopolitan capital of Senegal, played on "foreign" instruments. Songs were frequently sung in Spanish -- though few could understand them.

Inevitably, indigenous Senegalese elements crept into this music and helped to create dynamic new Afro-Cuban fusions. "First, traditional instruments, such as the tam-tam and the talking-drum, began to be introduced. Then the melodies of songs started to be changed, even though the accompaniment might still be typically `Cuban.' It was a gradual process. But there is a whole generation that is perfectly at home with Cuban music -- for a long time many Senegalese people actually thought it came from here.

It's very easy for us to improvise African dances to the rhythms." While a student in Dakar, Maal began playing with other young Peulhs who had also migrated to the capital. They got together in the evening to make music around town, and soon acquired a following. "Then Radio Senegal invited us to do some recordings, and I was `discovered.' People asked me to come and sing in Mauritania, in Guinea, in Mali -- and I felt that, if I took up their invitations, I should at least know what I was doing as a musician. I had already been at university for a year, studying Literature, when I decided to enroll in the Conservatoire de Musique de Dakar."

Although the focus was as much on the history of European music as on learning how to read and to compose, Maal did not resent this -- on the contrary, "It was of great use to me subsequently," he said, "as it gave me a point of reference and comparison when I started to ask questions about African music -- such as why it was not played everywhere, unlike European music. After all we have our equivalent of chamber music, of popular music, and the troubadour tradition. But our forms are different -- less contrived and less readily dissected. I told myself that we needed to work on arrangements to make them more accessible to non-Africans, to straddle the ground between what we do naturally and what is commercial.

That's what impelled me to go to Paris." Maal won a scholarship for three years to continue his studies in the French capital -- also, with post-colonial irony, the capital of African music. He did a few concerts with people like Linton Kwesi Johnson and Mutabaruka, and encountered new sounds, but it was what he learned from established European musicians about arranging, putting together a well-packaged repertoire, and working in the recording studio, that proved of greatest value when Maal returned to Dakar to form his own group.

Since then he has made several recordings with Mansour Seck, including the brilliant Djam Leelii , on which Maal plays acoustic guitar. Response to last year's album Firin in Fouta has marked a major breakthrough for Maal with an international audience. The influences range from salsa to soul, and from the predominant Afro-funk to occasional hints of Celtic folk. The instrumentation is appropriately just as varied, courtesy of an array of more than 40 accompanying musicians -- including a seven-piece horn section, the strings of the London Session Orchestra, English saxophonist Andy Shephard, Irish bouzouki ace Donal Lunny, and Breton harpist Myrdhin.

The diversity of musical elements is beautifully integrated by Maal's rich and soaring vocals, and above all by the sheer flair of his arrangements. "Swing Yella" is an outstanding example of how the monotones of rap can be blended with melody, and both "Sidiki" and "Gorel" demonstrate that the judicious use of sampling can produce powerful rhythmic effects that transcend mere technical wizardry. Musical intelligence shines through on every track.

Though he sings in Fulani, the accompanying notes to Firin in Fouta indicate that Maal's lyrics are crafted at the same high level of artistry. It's easy to see why he is considered the intellectual among Senegalese musicians. "In Peulh society those of us who write songs are asked what our words bring to help people understand and deal with the issues of life. I spent many years growing up with that attitude toward lyrics. And, when I started to sing, my public consisted mainly of young people from my region who had been to school and had traveled, who wanted singers who were able to address their particular concerns. I acquired a reputation for my lyrics, so that now I am not allowed to sing anything in which my followers cannot find their own ideas and aspirations reflected."

Though a thoroughly modern and sophisticated artist, Maal -- who still lives in Dakar -- remains steeped in the traditional music of his homeland. "It's the most important basis of what I do -- and I grew up with it, so it's what I do most naturally. I don't have to force anything. If I feel something in my head, my heart, or my spirit, I take out my instrument and compose a song. I believe in this music -- it's like an intimate conversation between me and society."

In less than seven years, Baaba Maal has forged a career that spans from Senegal to Paris, musically as well as geographically. He started his band, Dande Lenol, in 1985, with a determination to fuse modern electronic pop with the voice of the Tuculear people of his native region of Senegal. In the time since he has produced legendary Afro-electric music in albums like the thundering Wango. Before the band, he also produced an ethereal acoustic guitar album called Djam Leeli. (This was later rescued from oblivion by Rogue Records in London in 1988, and released in the U.S. on Mango last year.) It was a reverb-soaked meditation on the music of his people, a dream sequence of their history. If Wango was an earthquake and Djam Leeli a spiritual exodus, Baayo is an earth-bound journey, a walk of a thousand miles through the west African landscape. In a mostly acoustic environment (there's electric bass and some very subtle synths), Baaba Maal sets forth with guitars, koras, drums and voices. The music is crisp and dry, each pluck of the strings distinct and up-front, a dramatic change from the usual tendency to drown things in a pool of echo and delay. The songs are magnificent, cool yet dramatic vocal deliveries of stories both epic and commonplace. One listen to "Agouyadji" will win you over. This mix of swirling strings and talking drums speaks of the tongues of Africa, and speaks in tongues as well, Baaba's voice rising above language differences in his call for unity among his people. In the last ten years there have been a few artists that have built mileposts on the road to international musical unity; Fela, Bob Marley, Salif Keita's Soro, Masekela's Techno Bush, to name all too few. With Baaba Maal's second acoustic offering, we may be seeing the first entry on this decade's list. [Music Access #3633]