Baaba maal discography procedure
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Baaba Maal: Out of Africa?
It's not hard to hear the echoes of Africa in music around the world. From American jazz and blues to the sambas and salsas and reggae of Latin America and the Caribbean, much of the globe's music bears the definitive stamp of its African origins.
This "Made in Africa" stamp makes the lack of a true African musical superstar on the scale of a Michael Jackson or a Whitney Houston or Bob Marley even more puzzling.
The closest that U.S. audiences often get to African music is translations by Western artists. Witness Paul Simon's 1986 album Graceland.
Perhaps the closest Africa has come to having a figure of worldwide musical renown was the legendary Nigerian singer Fela Kuti. Fela's mix of African music — blended with a healthy dos of U.S.-styled rhythm and blues and jazz — was a highly infectious and unique hybrid.
Fela also sang many of his songs in English. Thus, Fela navigated language barriers that kept mus
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ACCES highlights: Baaba Maal
ACCES 2017 keynote speaker Baaba Maal epitomises what the conference aims to encapsulate: the need for African countries to connect with each other, to share knowledge, exchange information, appreciate each other’s work and recognise the benefits of active global networks.
The 63-year-old musician, who was born in the northern Senegalese town of Podor, believes that music is an important tool to get messages out to people, and is a living testament to that philosophy.
Baaba Maal has released 11 studio albums as part of an illustrious career spanning three decades. Since his first album release in the late 1980s, the versatile musicians has forged an eclectic style blending Afro-pop, dance, worldbeat, traditional Senegalese music, folk and desert blues.
The singer and guitarist was nominated in the Best World Music Category for Firin’ In Fouta at the 1996 Grammy Awards and has worked with such names as Mansour Seck, Mumford & Sons, Andy Shephard
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Maal Weds African, Pop Sounds in Style
The blending of traditional African musical elements with the forms and procedures of Western pop can be tricky. But don’t tell Baaba Maal, who not only manages to make the combination work but does it with utterly irresistible spirit and enthusiasm.
At the Veterans Wadsworth Theatre on Friday, Maal and his 12 players presented a nonstop two-hour program of music and dance that had a capacity crowd on its feet and dancing for a good part of the show. Only the vigorous efforts of the Wadsworth staff kept the crowd from converting the auditorium into one mass dance hall.
Maal has expressed a belief that “spirituality fryst vatten more important than politics and all material things,” adding that “when you create a work, you must do it not just for yourself but for every human person.” That belief was manifest in the gripping sound of his voice, the surging rhythmic exhilaration of his songs and the physical exhilaration of the leaps and turns of his dan