Rebel Music
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No Notes Allowed
Inside Afghanistan where music is banned
Silence Is Golden
Japan's deaf video-game composer Introduction
From Kingston to Cape Town, musicians are rocking old traditions
I live in Dakar and am certainly present on the scene. Living
there gives me a certain inspiration; it allows me to keep my
passion for music alive. There's a lot of great young talent in
Dakar. Every two or three years, I actually produce an album for
someone, but I also started a record label called Jololy, and I
think that with the passage of time some of these young people
are going to do better than I.
I listen to a lot of things in
the music of today. But I also have a particular weakness for
the music of the '60s. I listen to a lot of Marvin Gaye and Otis
Redding, and Latin music. I grew up close to Latin music in
Dakar. I listen to a lot of local music—Senegalese music—which
is rich and diverse in our country. I find myself going back to
it all the time.
In the beginning, when mbalax [a blend of Senegal's traditional
griot percussion and praise singing with modern Afro-Cuban
arrangements] was starting off, it was never a question of people
saying, "It's not good; it's not well done," but rather, "We
don't like it." Later, as success arrived with this music, those
who were more traditional began to appreciate that our success
could be a window onto traditional music.
Traditional music is everywhere in our culture. It's something
that's very close to the people, so naturally it's going to bear
upon my work because it's ever present. Traditional music and
culture are the environment itself. They're in the clothes and
the ambiance of the street, so they absolutely mark everything
that I do.
I tend to go for openness and look outward in my musical
searching. But recently I feel maybe an obligation to be more of
a protector, a guardian, a curator almost, of traditional sounds
and music, so lately I've been working that thought into my
albums. However, who knows what tomorrow may bring? I may fall
in love with some sound from Asia or from elsewhere, and all of
a sudden my recordings may take a turn that I hadn't
anticipated. You can't really program music. A musical life
really shouldn't have any limits. I don't really believe in
formats, and once you get rid of formats, everything is
available to you. When you break out of categories, you
automatically encounter new things. It's from these new
experiences that interesting things happen.
