Senegal and Gambia music reviews

This CD knocked me out from the first note. After listening to it on the bus 400 times I actually bought the Lonely Planet Senegal & Gambia (sorry Rough Guide...). The music of this region is jazzy, smooth, soulful, and completely unique. Highly recommended.

West Africa is famous for its great musicians. Indeed, many styles of music, such as the Blues, Jazz and Reggae, are believed to have their origins in the hereditary musician traditions of west Africa (particuarly the kingdom of Mali). Whether or not this is true, the music on this CD is particularly moving and beautiful. Another compilation in the Rough Guides series, this CD explores the musical traditions of the west African countries of Senegal and Gambia.
Several big names, such as Baaba Maal, Youssou N'Dour, Ismael Lo and Cheikh Lo, all appear on this CD, with excellent contributions from each. However, there is more to this music than the big names, already familar to the west. The songs "Kairaba Jabi" and "Nguisstal" are both excellent examples of Sene-Gambian music, and the number done by Orchestra Baobab is wonderfully lively. Over all, this CD is an excellent compilation of Sene-Gambian pop music, showcasing a variety of styles and artists. Go with it!

Bougarabou drumming is an anomaly within the general constellation of African drumming. In most parts of Africa, you will find an ensemble of several drummers, each with his/her own drum--together they will play interlocking rhythms. Sometimes there will be ensembles of different types of drums, or different sizes of the same type of drum, or a mixture of both. Rarely does one drummer play more than one hand drum at the same time.

Not so in bougarabou drumming, from the Casamance region of southern Senegal, where the most inexperienced drummer might play only one drum, but the better he gets, the more sizes he will play simultaneously, up to as many as four. The drummer, who is a soloist (with the only accompaniment being a bell player), traditionally wears iron rattles attached to his wrists by leather straps.

The kind of bougarabou usually seen in the U. S. will remind most people of the djembe, the main similarity between the two being visual. In this country, we usually we see bougarabous constructed/tuned like djembes: the drumhead is attached to the drum's wooden shell with nylon rope using the familiar Malian weave. Saikouba Badjie's drums, however, are constructed using peg tuning, as are many African drums all around the continent, including those of the sabar ensembles of eastern Senegal, and many of the drums native to Ghana and Nigeria. [A different sort of lacing using gut strings or leather thongs is very prevalent in much of eastern and southern Africa.]

How the djembe and the bougarabou are different: the djembe [which these days is a nearly omnipresent phenomenon in the U. S.] is goblet-shaped, with a drumhead of goatskin, which gives it its high almost barking type sound. There are only 3 different kind of tones typically played on a djembe. In the area of Africa it's native to (Mali, Guinea, and the eastern part of Senegal), it's supposed to be used more as a support drum, and at certain junctures as a solo instrument. The real meat and potatoes of Malian/Guinean drumming is the dundun ensemble, three deeper sounding cylindrically shaped drums of various sizes which are played with sticks.

By contrast, the bougarabou has a drumhead of cow skin, and thus a mellower sound (timbre), more akin to that of the familiar barrel-shaped conga drums, but even more articulate than they, probably due to the particular amplification qualities of its conical shape. There is a plethora of sounds that can be gotten from this drum.

Now to the music: this guy can really, really play . . . this should get more than just your toes tapping (and your head spinning?). The man is an absolute virtuoso, and has been at it for a long, long time.

Actually, all of the Village Pulse releases are stunning in their detail and the quality of their sound. The only thing I wish is that the singers could be dialed in a bit more, as that element of the music has been downplayed in order to accurately capture the sounds of the drums. Too bad they haven't developed interactive CD's which allow the users to change critical aspects of the mix . . . I'd certainly like to have both 'versions' available, as what we can hear of the singing is excellent.

It is amazing that Amazon.com even has this title on its site. I won't review the album proper here (although the 5 stars should tell you something). I just thought that anybody who had navigated this far would like to know that [...]DOES have it in stock...

I picked this CD from a bin on a lark and didn't listen to it for six months. Every cut is great. Lilting, rocking, infectious, energizing ... If you like African highlife music with a moving, rolling vibe, you'll love this ... It's more Northern African/Arab than Sunny Ade ...