Customer Reviews

Made in Dakar

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I haven't been buying much new music lately and hadn't even realized this had been released. I just happened to catch Orchestra Baobab performing live at a small club at the recent Montreal Jazz Festival and was lucky enough to hear some of the tracks on this disk performed live the first time I heard them. The show was just incredible and the tracks from "Made in Dakar" were definitely among the highlights of the show for me. I've been listening to "Specialist In All Styles" and "Pirates Choice" constantly since they were released and there are tracks on this disk that are even better than anything on those two outstanding recordings. Since picking up the new disk, I keep wearing my iPod battery down replaying "Pape Ndiaye," "Nijaay," "Colette" and "Aline." This is a great recording and if you have any interest in African music, pick it up!

Like the previous reviewer, I did not hesitate in buying Baobob's "Made in Dakar" I have all their available releases. This music is never far from my players..car or home. If they dont get you groovin and movin ,you are dead.

once again the orchestra baobab has done it. ever since i stumbled across their first release and then the pirates choice i have been hooked on this festive sound. when i saw this in the store there was absolutely no hesitation but to grab it and run to buy it so i could get home and play it. do i know any the players or what they play? no. do i know any of the words? no. does it matter that much? no. this is music that you put on and you just enjoy for whatever it is that they do and what they do is make wonderful music. would i recommend it to any and all? well the five stars should speak for itself. the guitar work, the percussion, the horns all combine into a very moving beat that pulls you willingly along. the vocals are very expressive and it all works extremely well this time too just as the other cds have. you will not regret buying this.

Orchestra Baobab started out in the 1970s. During that time many Senegalese bands were playing mambo, salsa, etc. and a few bands like this one changed the sound by adding electric guitars and incorporating local rhythms.

On this CD, which has great liner notes, they have broadened their sound by adding to the Cuban percussion some West African drums. For me, a latin music fan, the result of a very exotic sound with echoes of Cuban music styles such as Guajira and Son. There are plenty of guitar solos here with a lot of changes in the rhythm, so the album never feels repetitive. They look for inspiration equally in Senegal's musical heritage as well as calypso music, salsa, and even Carlos Santana.

This is such a rich taste of the densely textured, sophisticated structure of African music -- in this case Afro Cuban. The key elements really stand out -- the polyrhythmic (many shifting percussive patterns at once)
and falsetto passages. These elements are so present in the motown and pop music of the 60s. i keep thinking of the original Frankie Lymon recording of Why Do Fools Fall in Love, where he breaks into that angelic falsetto over the booming, chanting anchor of the bassline, which is SO classically African.

These are rico suave , smooth , jazzy nightclub sounds from the ends of the earth -- the last bit of land of west Africa, ie Senegal, Cabo Verde and out into the vast Atlantic. Chilling in a historical context.

I am an ardent fan of the orchestra's music and I hate to rain on the parade of five star reviews here, but this is nowhere as good as their previous studio release, Specialist in All Styles, or their earlier work - just too even all around, not gutsy enough. In fact I hardly ever play it though I play all their other stuff quite often.

Yes it is early to be making such a list so soon but I would not be surprised if this was on my top ten for the year. I already had two of their previous and thought that I did not need another. But, every time I went to my local cd store the clerks were playing this cd and it has just slowly but surely won me over. This is music that is not easy to find so order it now and enjoy it. It is part King Sunny Ade and part Cuban Allstars and is just plain well done-the Orchestra Baobab way.

I really rate this one a 3.5. The big flaw in this album, in my mind, is the two tracks "Nijaay" and "Beni Barale." I've been spoiled by the fact that I've heard the old recordings of both of these songs ("Nijaay" is in Baobab's N'Wolof, "Beni Barale" is in Bembeya Jazz's Hommage a Demba Camara). The versions on this modern Baobab album just don't live up to the originals; they're too fast and rushed, and just don't have the right feel. I find them unlistenable and always skip them.

The other reservation I have is that the album is overproduced. In particular, there is way too much reverb on the saxophones. Issa Cissokho's sax playing style makes a lot of use of staccato notes, and I really think the audio engineer made a bad aesthetic call by using that much reverb.

But other than for these two flaws, I really love this album. Not as much as their classic 70s-early 80s material, but not too far behind. I find this album much better than Specialist in All Styles, however, which I felt was spotty and uninspired.

In my mind, even though it's the same people, the old Baobab's music was a bit slower, tenser and more dramatic, while the new Baobab are faster and more energetic. The rest of the album's material suits their present playing style a lot better than the two tracks I singled out.