Baaba Maal, Being ★★★★☆
Over a 40-year career, Senegalese musician Baaba Maal has become a towering figure in world music. The son of a fisherman, Maal grew up in Podor in the country’s far north and was expected to follow his father’s career path. He didn’t, instead studying music in Dakar and, later, at the Beaux-Arts school in Paris. Maal has released over a dozen albums, fusing traditional African and Western sounds and working with producers including Brian Eno. His last album, 2016’s The Traveller, was a fairly mellow and meditative affair, as was his collaboration with London folkies Mumford & Sons on their Johannesburg EP the same year. His new album, Being, is a different beast altogether.
Its seven tracks are percussive and urgent, melding traditional rhythms and trance-like chants with intense electronic arrangements. Produced by Johan Karlberg, who was recently behind Self Esteem’s much-lauded Prioritise Pleasure album, Being gives the 69-year-old’s music a more modern and claustrophobic edge. This is by some stretch the most contemporary-sounding album of Maal’s career.
The album is sung primarily in Pulaar, Maal’s native tongue, but there’s some Wolof too (the national language of Senegal), with lyrics about the impact of technology on modern life and how new generations of Africans can make themselves heard in an increasingly noisy world. But you don’t need to be Pulaar or Wolof speakers to understand the album’s pulse and messaging. The music does it for you: the urgency of the sounds – and the juxtaposition of traditional plucked instruments with modern programmed ones – conveys this sense of old and new colliding.
The beats pound. I wouldn’t be the first listener to notice how similar in sound the Senegalese sabar drums on opening track Yerimayo Celebration are to massed Indian dhol drums. The song is a pulverising thrill, with the percussion its driving force. The track Freak Out, featuring Karlberg’s band The Very Best, starts with heavily distorted vocals before it segues into a mid-tempo stomp, complete with snippets of buckled bass and leftfield atmospherics. It’s music that would be deemed adventurously contemporary even if it was released by someone half Maal’s age. It’s not all in-your-face percussion and chart-friendly modernism. Maal’s vocals have a soothing quality, particularly on songs such as Casamance Nights. At eight minutes long, this percussion-free track closes the album. Its reflective ambience comes as something of a tonic after what’s gone before.
Maal has updated his sound just as the spheres of world music and pop music seem to have been converging in ever-closer alignment. Beyoncé’s Renaissance album from last year had clear afrobeat influences, particularly on tracks like Move, which featured Nigerian singer Tems as a guest. Also in 2022, Nigerian ‘Afro-fusion’ star Burna Boy collaborated with Ed Sheeran.
Maal’s personal influence seems to be spreading too – and about time. He recently provided the voice of Wakanda on the soundtrack for Afrofuturism blockbusters Black Panther and Wakanda Forever, working with the soundtrack producer by taking him around Senegal to find musicians. A renowned polymath at home – Maal’s studio in Dakar is a hub for artists, musicians, designers, environmentalists and students – he is now becoming better known elsewhere too.
Being, then, is something of a sonic assault. People who liked The Traveller may feel – justifiably – that melody plays second fiddle to rhythm here. This certainly isn’t music to woozily veg out to on the Sunday morning of WOMAD. This is stand-up-and-listen music, commanding attention in surprising ways. Being suggests that far from mellowing with age, Maal – who turns 70 in June – remains as eager and excited to explore new frontiers as he ever was. James Hall
