Orchestra Baobab formed in Dakar in 1970 as the house band of the newly opened Club Baobab. Its musicians arrived with remarkably different musical histories. Members had roots in Senegal’s Wolof and Casamance cultures, Mali, Morocco and Togo, while Cuban records and musicians arriving through Dakar’s port had already made Afro-Cuban music an important part of the city’s listening culture.
The band called its own approach variété, almost like a musical salad.
That word makes sense when you listen to how guitar, saxophone, percussion and voices coexist. Cuban influence is clearly present, yet it never feels like musicians in Senegal trying to reproduce Havana exactly. Local phrasing, languages and musical backgrounds continually reshape it.
I find that circulation fascinating. Music travelled from Africa across the Atlantic, changed enormously in Cuba, returned through records and ports, then became raw material for something new in Dakar.
Influence is sometimes described as a straight line from one artist to another. Orchestra Baobab sounds more like a route drawn around an ocean.
