Baaba Maal

BIOGRAPHY

Singer, guitarist, traveler, ambassador, dancer, philosopher, humanitarian, activist, spiritual guide and Senegalese superstar Baaba Maal was not destined to be any of those things. His family were fishermen, his father rarely traveling further than the local mosque, and never singing outside it. Baaba was expected to follow the path of his father.

The elite Griot caste provided Senegal with the singers, poets and traveling performers, the expressive human carriers of knowledge, myth and wisdom, the keeper of collective memory, which also came with the energy of the entertainer and the showman, and the charisma of the star. It was the custom to listen to the griots to hear the political news, to make plans, to get to know who you were and where you came from, to discover unity with the spirits of those who have gone before and find out what our direction in life should be. Tradition dictated that if you weren’t born a griot, you couldn’t become one. Singing was a private business. Baaba, though, had other ideas.

These ideas have led after four decades of recording, performing and refining his continually evolving hybrid of tradition and innovation, to Being, an urgent, contemplative album that contains all he has learnt as entertainer, communicator, explorer, writer and adventurer. Being is the latest stage in his development of a highly distinctive sound that ingeniously fuses traditional African instruments and rhythms with a dramatically modern electronic approach. It’s another set of mysterious stories where Maal mixes evocative, personal local concerns with grand universal themes to produce a unique form of deep, immersive soul music.