Orchestra Baobab-Made in Dakar

Orchestra Baobab-Made in Dakar

Worid Circuit

Five years after feted specialist In All Styles, Dakar's ever-wonderful Orchestra Baobab return with an album in which they remain precisely that - and more. From the smooth but meticulously delivered opener Pape Ndiaye - all sax curliques and reflexive, empathetic orchestration - the reformed collective offer a varied yet uniformly excellent follow-up. Recorded in Youssou N'Dour's Xippi Studio's in Dakar, Senegal, Made in Dakar combines a series of old and new tracks underscored by soaring praise singer voices, idiosyncratic yet sublime guitar playing and the sort of effortless group dynamic that comes from musical bonds forged back in the day. Emphasis on the hard-cracking sabar drum - a fixture of the mbalax sound that originally elbowed them off their perch - make for cha-cha-cha rhythms and galloping pay tracks alike. Influences still range from rumba and high life to calypso to Cuban and Afro-pop - all polished with an insouciant swagger. Orchestra Baobab are back at the top of the tree.

Jazzwise talks to guitarist Barthelemy Atisso of Orchestra Baobab about the album Do you consider yourselves a bridge between the old Afdca and the newAfrica? For us there is no distinction. We only have one Africa! The Africa of all time! We have added sabar drum to enrich our work but it isn't the first time we've used it; back in the 70s we recorded an album, Une Nuit au Jender, with (Guinean percussionist) Doudou N'Diaye Rose who was the maestro of Senegalese percussion. Is Cuban musk still as strong an influence? Well yes - we were brought up on Cuban music, as were all Senegalese of our generation. All the nightclubs specialised in Cuban music. Everyone loved it. Though it should really be referred to as Afro-Cuban music because it had left Africa in the first place and come back again - where we added African ingredients: the tam-tam, the bell, the traditional flute. Now much has jams musk influenced Orchestra Baobab? Is jam in West Africa defined differently than in the West? Baobab's music has a variety of influences - and one of them is jazz. When we used to play at Club Baobab in the 70s the mixed crowd had mixed tastes, so we tried to satisfy everyone by playing them a bit of jazz, rumba, salsa, bolero, cha cha cha, rock, reggae, soul, tango. For me in particular jazz and blues opened up a world of possibilities. 1 was down away by people like BB King, Jimmy Smith, Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery. The track 'Ben, Barale' is your tribute to the great Guinean outfit Bembeya Jam. Why were they so important to you? There was a period of time when the two best known groups in Senegal and Guinea were Orchestra Baobab and Bemebya Jazz. We complemented each other. It felt important to pay tribute to that spirit.

Jane Cornwall