As the city of gold looks forward to Baba Maal’s concerts, our critic considers other recent shows
HE was picked up from the airport in a limo, because that’s what he requested. And he’s over half an hour late for the interview. In fairness, his flight was delayed by three hours. He walks into the room in a regal purple mandarin jacket, the sleeves rolled back to reveal gold lining, his crop cut hair tinted blonde on top.
He is, in short, an important man back home – a point underscored by a representative of the Senegalese press who fusses around him: we must understand this a short interview, he says, because Mr Maal is tired. After about 15 minutes he moves Baba Maal off the coffee table the photographer had chosen because it’s “not at all comfortable”.
Maal has recorded four albums on the Mango/Island label, and five before that. His most recent, and best known internationally, are Lam Toro and Firin’ In Fouta, both of which earned him rave reviews – as do his live concerts (12 people on stage, including two dancers, talking drum, kora, two saxes and loads of percussion).
Born in northern Senegal, and “approaching 40”, he is profoundly attached to his Toucouleur heritage, but at the same time he’s progressive, a reformer who speaks English as well as French. “I’ve fought the caste system at home,” he explains, “like the griot thing. In my society you’re born into the griot line and you only make music if that is your heritage.” Griots not only have a hereditary calling, they’re also society’s commentators, critics, praise singers, keepers of oral history and settlers of disputes. So, strictly speaking, he has no traditional right to make music.
But Maal, the son of a musical mother – who sang traditional songs and wrote her own music and a muezzin – a prayer leader, rebelled and chose a musical career while he was studying law, moving on to study music at the conservatoire in Dakar.
“It was especially difficult for me as I had not only graduated from school but was studying at university. People just couldn’t understand – particularly as musicians had such a hard time making a living.”
The music of his tradition is called yela and you can quite clearly hear it’s an ancient form. “It came from the [medieval] empire of Ghana, north up to Senegal,” he says. Part of Maal’s skill is in combining the music with modern elements, without sacrificing the source.
“There are good things and bad things in tradition,” says Maal, who takes his role as musician and messenger very seriously. In Senegal, he is seen as an intellectual and a progressive ready to question values he feels hold the country back. He is, in fact, an honorary griot.
“In Senegal people will not excuse me if I sing a song and it does not say anything; because I’ve had the opportunity to study and travel and they haven’t.
“I’m an African, I belong to a universal civilisation, and I grew up in music even though I’m not a griot. I know I have a responsibility to help society to take choices.”
One of the issues he raises is female circumcision. “It’s not a good practice. People must have the right to decide for themselves and not have this done to them when they’re small children. And there can be a lot of medical problems afterwards.” He sings too, about bush abortions and the injustices of caste and class, as well as of spirituality, love, values and religion.
Born into the Islamic faith, and an El Hadj, one who has been to Mecca, he doesn’t see himself as especially confined by one religion, but as “very spiritual”.
How has fame affected him? “In Senegal, even if you’re famous, you have to live in society. The door of the house must be wide open so people can come and see you and talk about their problems. And then you can sing about them.”
And that’s what his band’s name, Dande Lenol, means: “The Voice of the People”, or “Race”, translations differ.
What is his greatest fear? “I don’t have anything that scares me,” he says, taken aback by the question, but adds after a pause: “I’m scared of people who don’t try to understand what’s happening right in front of them.”
Baba Maal plays at Mega Music in Newtown with the support act Phuzekhemisi tonight at 8pm and at Orlando Stadium in Soweto on Sunday in a big line-up concert that starts at 1pm