Baaba Maal: Television
Baaba Maal releases his first album in eight years
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Monday, 01, Jun 2009 04:01
Palm Pictures, out now.
In a nutshell...
Senegalese star formats his music for widescreen.
What's it all about?
Made in London and the Senegalese capital Dakar, this album was overseen by label boss and Island Records supremo Chris Blackwell. It was he who suggested to Baaba Maal that his next album should be a radical departure.
Blackwell wanted "something different, to intrigue you and pull you in, something you can play all the way through, with one track leading to another, and interwoven together, like a very long single". At only eight tracks in length the album is unusual considering so many artists choose to 'fill' the CD format. Yet it is welcome for being a focused piece of music, achieving the aim set out by the label boss.
Who's it by?
Born the son of a fisherman over fifty years ago, Baaba Maal had to overcome more than most musicians. Traditionally in Senegal, only the griot caste can produce singers and storytellers. However it was the influence of his life-long friend, the blind griot Mansour Seck, which brought him to music.
Mansour Seck again features on this album yet it was label chief Chris Blackwell who suggested he work with producer Barry Reynolds, the man who brought the best out of Marianne Faithful and Grace Jones for Island Records. And it was Reynolds who introduced Maal to Sabina Sciubba and Didi Gutman of New York electro band Brazilian Girls - all three have revitalized the Senegalese musician's sonic template.
As an example...
The titles of the tracks on Television hold great significance to Maal. Nearly every one is self-explanatory - witness A Song For Women or International. And if one's Wolof isn't up to scratch, Maal himself explains how it's not the words that are important:
"I see language as an instrument. Sabina told me that she could just feel the meaning of the words that I was singing. This is the power of music - it can give you advice even if you do not understand the language."
Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys
Baaba Maal was particularly unfortunate in losing out to the anodyne Deep Forest after being nominated for a Grammy in the World Music category in 1996.
Being pipped to the post by two Frenchmen sampling African Baka pygmy tribes over electronic beats has got to hurt. So it is notable that Maal has brought his own arsenal of keyboard sounds to this album to boost his still-recognizable signature sound.
This record has the kind of wide-ranging commercial sound which should get the Grammy committee nodding their heads in approval, and is a shoe-in for the World Music Awards.
What the others say
Baaba Maal's concerted attempt to expand his sound has generally met with favour from reviewers. "Television is an essential purchase for fans of West African artists, but should also be investigated by anyone who loves heartfelt, impeccably performed music," reckons MusicOMH."
"Elegant, pan-cultural pop," is how the Independent describes it, though all reviews are frustrating in their politeness, as if criticism of an African artist could be perceived as xenophobia.
So is it any good?
Some say that when you are successful, you invite opprobrium, and no more is this true than in the world of 'roots' music. Any artist who is wedded to a particular culture yet transcends his target audience through crossover appeal can easily (and lazily) be termed 'sell-out'. We have witnessed this with hip-hop over a quarter of a century, and the same goes for so-called world music.
The detractors of Baaba Maal have been numerous since the late 1980s when he began to achieve commercial success. His fusion of traditional Senegalese instruments and idioms with reggae, pop, and other African styles led to critics claiming his music is 'too Western'. It is frustrating that these critics appear to be searching for Library of Congress-styled recordings to preserve African music. They fail to notice that the music and its people are still very much alive and hungry to break new ground.
Baaba Maal is one of those artists. "It may seem bizarre," he says, "because you may think that the album is not so African, but when you talk about Africa you see images, you see a landscape, and the African instruments can't give me the sound I wanted. The keyboards is the appropriate instrument - it can give the sound of wind, or the leaves of the trees: any sound you want you can get from keyboards, and that's what I was looking for."
Such an elegant statement of intent is backed up by the compositions which sparkle with a new energy that proves the eight years since Mi Yeewnii have been spent well. Every great album must start with a statement, and the enigmatic title track Television is just that. Some swirling electronics quickly mutate into a hypnotic downbeat groove. And Maal notes: "The television set is like a stranger you didn't ask for coming into your living room - you don't care about who he is, he just seems to come from nowhere and gives you information."
Musings abound on an album that sets out to answer many questions. A Song For Women has a superb keyboard backing as Maal argues feminism, yet the haunting call-and-response vocals are African to the core.
And despite the inclusion of funky jams such as Tindo, it's the introspective moments which stand out here. Cantaloupe is a track that transcends culture: rooted in African music, the nagging whistled refrain is pure pop in anyone's language, and truly experimental.
Although the taut length of eight tracks is to be applauded in avoiding filler, there's a sense that this is only a long EP. A statement of intent from an artist that has rediscovered his spirit and will issue forth more as soon as he is ready. Detractors will have much to point to in its Western sounds, but perhaps with the release of Television Baaba Maal does not want to be limited to analogue. This is digital world music of the highest definition.
7/10
Marcus Dubois