Baaba Maal
★★★★
Being
MARATHON ARTISTS. CD/DL/LP
Now in his 70th year, Podor’s most famous son keeps pushing.
MAAL WAS almost 40 before the word ‘Afrofuturism’ was first used, but if any term describes the mission the Senegalese singer has been on all his life – fusing traditional sounds with technology and music developed beyond Africa – that’s as good as anything yet coined. For only his third album of the past 20 years, he has reunited with Johan Hugo Karlberg (producer of 2016’s The Traveller but best known for Self Esteem’s Prioritise Pleasure) and instructed the Swede to be generous with the percussion; make it sound eternal and thoroughly 21st century. Thus, after an opening burst of bass ngoni, Maal’s regal voice swoops in over pounding drums – underlining how close India’s dhol drummers are to Senegal’s sabar players – and they barely let up before the stunning closer, Casamance Nights, a call-to-prayer-like deep trance. His most satisfying outing in decades.