Review by Banning Eyre. Photographs by Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow

First the bad news: Senegalese mbalax superstar gave the show of the season last Friday night (February 14), and chances are pretty good you missed it. Now, the good news: Thione and the band are sticking around New York--enjoying two feet of snow at the moment--and they'll be doing a 9:00 PM show at S.O.B.s on Sunday, February 23. Here's more good news for those in the New York area: Afropop Worldwide has two pairs of tickets to give away. Click on Free Stuff on our homepage for details.

Thione Seck delivers a hard-edged take on Dakar's classic mbalax sound. The style is based in the driving polyrhythms of Wolof sabar drumming. Seck began his career as a griot, and he has a powerful, majestic voice worthy of a traditional praise singer. In the early '70s, he sang briefly in Orchestra Baobab, Senegal's classic salsa band, currently enjoying a glorious revival on the international scene after fifteen years of dormancy. But Seck has long since parted ways with the kings of Senegalese salsa. Beginning in 1974, he has headed his own band, Raam Daan, which means "to achieve your goal." The grandeur of griot song and the sensual romanticism of salsa remain elements in Seck's sound, but his goal was neither of these, and for nearly 30 years now, he's been making music entirely on his own terms.

When Afropop first met Seck in Dakar in 1987, he told us he likes to play mbalax "pur et dur"--pure and powerful. The most striking thing about his sound is the contrast between his bands' cracking, aggressive rhythms, and his own serene, soaring voice--the still center of a musical hurricane. Seck and Raam Daan's yin-and-yang effect was on glorious display at Irving Plaza last Friday. Raam Daan uses three keyboards and just one guitar. Normally, this would not be a winning Afropop formula, but the core of the band's sound is really its rollicking percussionists whose taut rhythms power the music. Two of the keyboards play interlocking lines and the third stands in for a brass section, but while this kind of electronics barrage might easily spoil the mix in another roots music band, in Raam Daan, the sound works.

The band took the stage at Irving Plaza after midnight and cranked through a couple of instrumental numbers. New York's Senegalese community was still arriving, but by the time the M.C. announced Seck, the dance floor was filling up nicely with well-dressed Africans, ready to strut their stuff in that particular way folks do when under the spell of mbalax. There's a stance involved--bent knees spread wide apart, straight back, loose shoulders and elbows, and lots of suggestive flicking motions in the general vicinity of the groin. Men favored baggy pants and one or two flipped their shirts up in the heat of dancing to reveal undulating stomachs. Many of the women wore colorful, shiny gowns, but once the band's groove took hold, nothing could hold them back.

The air was electric when Seck took the stage. True to form, he wore a gray suit more fitting for a government minister than one of the most spectacular singers in today's African music. But that's his way. All around him, a kinetic frenzy unfolded--the sharp thwack of stick on sabar drum, pummeling volleys of percussive fury laced with funky, rhythm guitar and punchy, interwoven keyboard lines, and a male stage dancer who wouldn't quit, gyrating, spinning, and prancing the stage like Seck's restless alter ego. Meanwhile, Seck scarcely moved, except to sway peacefully at the microphone, and to step aside during instrumental passages when the dancer invited people from the audience to show off their moves on stage. When the dancing reached a peak of action, Seck retired behind the sabar drums and took up the sticks to thwack out a few rhythms of his own.

Emanating self assurance and calm, Seck is the very definition of cool on stage, but the real clincher, of course, is his voice. It has the power of Salif Keita's, the reedy edge of Baaba Maal's, the casual confidence of Youssou N'Dour's, and yet no comparison does it justice. It is a singular, spectacular voice, so precise and personal that once you know it, you can spot it instantly. It's worth noting that no matter how good the voice, it's a rare African star who works without the support of backing singers, and yet Seck was the only voice heard during two hours of non-stop music at Irving Plaza. His vocal performance was embellished by no harmonies, no call-and-response passages, no second-string relief, and it needed none. Among the handful of Americans present, most of them hearing Seck live for the first time, one question recurred: Why isn't this guy an international superstar?

Clearly, Seck's lyrics are an important part of his appeal to Wolof speakers. I couldn't understand them, but it was easy to see that a number of his lines elicited emotional responses from the crowd, for example the moment when Seck sang about Touba, the spiritual center of Senegal's Mourides, a mystical, Africanist sect of Islam with profound power in Senegal's religious and economic life. When Seck evoked the name of Touba, it hit this crowd somewhere down deep, and people shouted back their approval.

When the show ended abruptly, I was hungry for more, and astonished to discover that it was 4:00 in the morning. Amid the crack and cry of Seck's transcendent mbalax, the night had slipped away as easily as a cold beer slips down the throat after a sweaty round of mbalax dancing.

Last year, Thione Seck's U.S. tour was cancelled late in the game due to visa complications. Despite new regulations, and our immigration service's hesitancy about visitors from Islamic countries like Senegal, one of that culture's most beautiful artistic expressions has made it to New York. And anyone within striking distance of S.O.B.s on Sunday, February 23, shouldn't miss the chance. For those who can't make it, here are a few images from Seck's extraordinary performance at Irving Plaza.

Thione Ballago Seck and Raam Daan. S.O.B.s, 204 Varick Street at W. Houston. Sunday, February 23. Doors open 7PM/Show 9PM. Call 212-243-4940. Banning Eyre

































































Contributed by: Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow