Sitting on a couch in their manager’s office, three of the oldest members of Senegal’s Orchestra Baobab, the legendary Afro-Cuban and west African fusion group, banter like family.
The handful of new members, mostly in their 30s and 40s, say they aspire to sustain the band’s historic soul and core sound, adding only a dash of their personal flavour. Some of Orchestra Baobab’s most iconic musicians, such as singer-percussionists Balla Sidibe and Rudy Gomis, died in the early 2020s, not long after famed saxophonist Issa Cissokho.
The much-loved orchestra, which blends regional Wolof griot music, Congolese rumba, Senegalese mbalax, jazz and other traditions through an Afro-Cuban filter, released “Made in Senegal”, its first album of new songs in nearly 10 years, on October 23. In the band’s latest music “you can sense a freshness, something new, something exceptional, something people haven’t really heard from the founders before”, rhythm guitarist Yahya Fall, 76, told AFP. The 44-year-old said she and the other younger musicians each bring their own touch, but try “to preserve the originality that brought the legendary orchestra to where it is today”. The young members “will be able to ensure Baobab lasts a full century”, 73-year-old percussionist Mountaga “Taga” Koite, the band’s last remaining original member, told AFP with a twinkle in his eye. Even today, “as soon as Baobab’s music starts, people get up to dance”, he said.
Several evenings later, their guitar and saxophone melodies conjured the same convivial chemistry, electrifying a Dakar nightclub and getting partygoers dancing cha-cha steps and swaying their hips as the band has done so many times in its half-century history.
