It was just after midnight in London’s Abbey Road Studios. In one room the Manic Street Preachers were at work on Know Your Enemy.
In the control room of Studio 2, a group of African musicians sat listening as guest percussionists from the Anglo-Latin band Sidestepper added the final dash of timbales and congas to what now promises to be the world-music album of the year.
Song titles had been written on pieces of paper that were shuffled around as decisions were made on the album’s running order.
A guitar line, recorded at a mobile studio out in a village in Senegal, burst from the speakers, followed by a flurry of notes from the kora (the west African harp), a clatter of percussion and then the stirring, harsh-edged voice of the singer, who now sat motionless in a snakeskin jacket for the first playback of the new recordings.
On that night, back in November, it seemed clear that Baaba Maal’s new album was going to be something special and the finished product is no disappointment.
It marks a bold and gently exhilarating return to basics for a man who has rightly been credited as one of the great singer-songwriters of Africa and whose last album, a somewhat frantic effort to appeal to the Western pop market, matched the stirring playing of his band Daande Lenol against poor collaborations with the likes of the Screaming Orphans and more interesting experimental work involving Brian Eno and Howie B.
This time around there are no electric guitars, no keyboards, synthesisers or horn section, and certainly no guest appearances by Western celebrities.
Maal started off as an acoustic artist, working with his old friend Mansour Seck, with whom he recorded that gentle African classic Djam Leeli back in 1989. His more recent amplified shows have always included an acoustic segment.
The new album is in some ways the long-awaited sequel to Djam Leeli, but here the acoustic songs are given a subtle, gutsy work-over by producer John Leckie, best known for his work with Radiohead.
After recording the bulk of the album outdoors in a Senegalese village, Leckie said his aim had been to create an album that sounded “epic but simple”. It’s certainly atmospheric (though thankfully Leckie doesn’t overdo those on-location sound effects) and it sounds like a gently intense live set, performed by master musicians.
The album starts with Maal’s stirring solo chanting, a reminder that he was brought up in the little town of Podor, on the edge of the desert, where African and Arabic styles collide. It then builds up as acoustic guitars, kora and backing choruses join in.
Some of the songs, such as Miyaabele and the exquisite, lilting love song Jamma Jenngli, are simple and melodic, driven on by the fine playing of Kante Manfila, who joins Maal and Mansour Seck on acoustic guitar.
Elsewhere are sections of what sounds like stuttering desert blues or passages of complex rhythmic music, with the kora joined by the sound of the balafon (the local xylophone), or the hoddu, the local name for the rasping desert lute, the ngoni. These are the ancient instruments that Maal would have heard when he started out, travelling across west Africa with Mansour Seck to study its music.
It could be argued that he’s not the only person to bring traditional instruments like these to a mass Western market — they are used extensively by the young Malian singer Rokia Traore, the finest new female performer in Africa — but this is still a brave, confident move.
That other Senegalese superstar, Youssou N’Dour, diluted his last, patchily brilliant album, Joko, by mixing African material with the now-predictable duets with Sting, Peter Gabriel or Wyclef Jean.
Maal makes no such compromise here. This is an African acoustic classic — albeit with bright, classy Western production values and a hint of Latin percussion — and it confirms his reputation as both songwriter and singer.
The songs, performed as always in his native Fulani, are mostly personal, dealing with friendship, the changing role of African women, or his yearning for Podor. His voice is distinctive as ever, by turns intimate, passionate and rousing.