June 4-6, 2004

The t-shirt for the debut edition of the Coca-Cola Ebony Festival in Dakar, Senegal June 4-6 proclaimed "Célébrons l'Afrique" ("Let's Celebrate Africa"). Celebrate indeed! The Festival presented a stellar line-up highlighted by hometown heroes Youssou N'Dour, Baaba Maal, Awadi (formerly PBS), and rising mbalax star Abdou Guitté Seck as well as strong pan-African representation from Ivoirian roots reggae legend Alpha Blondy, his Jamaican counterpart Jimmy Cliff, rai rocker Rachid Taha and many others. A high-tech sound and lighting system imported from France for the occasion made the artists sound good and look dazzling.

The Festival venue was Demba Diop football stadium in the Sicap residential neighborhood of Dakar. The stadium never filled to its 30,000 capacity but about 6,000 to 8,000 music fans gathered each night, cheering, dancing and hanging out with friends until three in the morning in a peaceful, alcohol free environment. The talent selection and production basics were supported by the marketing and execution expertise of Coca-Cola, which specializes in sponsoring sporting and musical events across the continent. This Festival yet again proved our point that the best African music festivals are in Africa!

A four-person Afropop Worldwide team covered the Coca-Cola Ebony Festival (as well as the World Sacred Music Festival in Fes, Morocco). Led by Senior Editor Banning Eyre and Exec. Producer Sean Barlow, we also had our Chief Audio Engineer, Michael Jones, and cameraman/DP Sascha Paladino. We brought back over one hundred hours of concert recordings and film footage and thousands of images that we'll share with the Afropop community over the next several months on Afropop Worldwide, Afropop.org, our e-Newsletter and in a film co-production with Link TV. (This summer, Link TV is also debuting our film on Afropop's visit to the 2003 Festival in the Desert in Mali.)

The opening night on Friday took place nearby Dakar on Gorée Island, infamous for its role as a hub of the West African slave trade. The Festival opening on Gorée Friday lived up to the tradition that no major event in this part of West Africa would be complete with drums and speeches. A talented drum and dance troop from the island performed. Our longtime colleague, radio personality and television producer Khalil Gueye, was the charming, bilingual emcee of the late afternoon ceremony at the island's primary school where some two hundred boys and girls waited patiently to do their part. The gathering of dignitaries was welcomed by the Mayor of Gorée. Ebony Festival co-director Mya Padmore spoke about the Festival's mission to balance the predominance of negative reporting on Africa's poverty, governance and health issues with Africa's positives--its people and culture. Alex Cummings, the Chairman of Coca-Cola Africa, spoke about his family's historical connection to Gorée. And then we all stood at attention as the school kids sang a moving rendition of Senegal's national anthem.

Friday's opening night performance was largely a made for TV event. V.I.P seats cost 50,000 CFA ($100). Hundreds of locals ringed the seated section of the intimate outdoor venue at the water's edge. Many of the stars set to perform over the weekend at the stadium each did one song, accompanied by either the National Orchestra of Senegal or by playback tapes. Some artists like Oliver Ngoma simply lip-synched, not always managing to match the placement of his microphone with the music coming out of the sound system. Playback is commonplace in TV productions these days, but this reporter is old school, and watching someone lip-synch just doesn't cut it as live entertainment. On the plus side, back at the hotel that night, we watched highlights from the evening broadcast in its entirety by Canal France International to millions in the francophone African world.

A humorous moment for the crowd came when Senegal's pioneering rap group, Awadi (formerly Positive Black Soul) performed a new song, "Pas Normale," ("Not Normal") that had the first row of elite Senegalese from the military, civil service, and business worlds chuckling. When we visited group leader Didier Awadi at his home later in the weekend, he explained that they were saying with words and gestures, "We say that from the short one (Senegal's first president Leopold Senghor) to the tall one (Abdou Diouf, president for nearly 20 years), and now with the bald one (current president Abdoulaye Wade), it's all the same problem, everyone wants to go out of the country, because what we're living here is not what we expected. Today is worse. That's why they (the elites) were laughing because we're talking about them, right in front. And this is nice because in certain countries we'd probably be killed (for saying this). But they have a certain sense of humor and can laugh about it. But we're not laughing, because this is serious."

After the ferry ride back to Dakar interviewing Magic System on the way and then a bus ride back to the hotel, the Afropop crew dropped off our gear and drove back into town to see Thione Seck and his band Raam Daan at their regular Friday night gig at Kilimanjaro Club in the university district. Coming from the classy but far-from-town four-star hotel where we were graciously accommodated, it felt like "Yeah--now I'm back in Dakar!" This is about the tenth time I've visited the city and Thione Seck is always on my must-see list. We've recorded him live in Dakar and featured those recordings on Afropop Worldwide. Thione greeted us warmly. We found him standing at the mixing desk while his younger brother warmed up the crowd. Then Thione took the stage at around 2 a.m. His serene, powerful voice floated sublimely over the thick rhythms and fast tempo of three sabar drummers, three keyboards, bass and two guitars….what he likes to call "mbalax, pure et dure" or "mbalax, pure and tough." That it is. The crowd was light but those in this funky, down home joint enjoyed themselves immensely. It was mostly local guys on the dance floor, some dancing in pairs, some floating. For the most party, they displayed still upper bodies but amazingly subtle, articulated lower bodies. As the songs crescendoed, the dancers knew exactly where the rhythmic breaks would happen and invented creative ways of accenting them with vigorous pelvic thrusts. The musicians and dancers were still popping around four when we left, waving to Thione Seck until the next time we meet again.

Thione Seck by the way, like Youssou N'Dour and his magnificent, landmark new work "Egypt," that hit the international market June 8th, has a new locally released cassette exploring Oriental sounds called "Orientissimo." (a play on the Oriente region in eastern Cuba famous as the birthplace of the son.)

The Coca-Cola Ebony Festival (no relation to Ebony Magazine) moved into its for-the-locals mode on Saturday night at the Demba Diop stadium where tickets cost 1,000 to 2,000 CFA ($2-4) for six hours of music. Quite a reasonable price we were told by many in the crowd. Ivoirian star Meiway opened with a crowd-pleasing set. His trademark is a call to wave white handkerchiefs when he cranks out his best known hits. The band was hot, but the audience also responded to the state-of-the-art light and sound, the likes of which has rarely graced a Senegalese stadium.

French rapper Diam's, a 24-year-old gal in a pink jumper suit and a close-cropped hairdo, had the Senegalese girls in rapture as they sung along to all her songs. Koffi Olomide cancelled due to political and visa problems in Congo. Rachid Taha, the crusty rocker from Algeria got bumped forward one night. At first the local crowd seemed puzzled by this party guy in military fatigues singing in Arabic, weaving a bit on stage, and wiggling his belly. But his speech to the crowd about the historic connections between the cultures of North Africa, West Africa and American blues and rock seemed to hit home as did his band's exuberant sound of rock guitar, Arabic oud and bendir percussion. Taha's version of "Rock the Casbah" and the crowd's reaction would have tickled The Clash.

Youssou N'Dour and his band filled with superb veteran musicians such as guitarist Jimmy M'Baye, tama talking drummer Assane Thiame, sabar drummer Babacar Faye, and bass player Habib Faye came on stage around one in the morning to perform a hit parade that most of the ten thousand souls in the audience seemed to know by heart, including his ballad "Birima." As soon as Youssou sang his last note, he was whisked away to his club Thiossane where he and the guys played until five. Meanwhile back at the stadium, Jimmy Cliff and his tight band offered a soulful hit parade of their own, including "The Harder They Come," "Many Rivers to Cross," "Wonderful World, Beautiful People," and others.

Magic System opened up the second night, Sunday. The crowd loved hearing Magic System's megahit "Premier Gaou." It's been a mainstay on African dance floors for several years now. The song reportedly sold close to 300,000 cassettes back home in the Ivory Coast and about a million in the rest of the continent. Back-to-back sets by Jocelyne Labylle and Ralphe Thamar, both representing the Antilles from the Caribbean, followed, with mellow, salsa-infused music that had the crowd swaying.

Then came the rising mbalax twenty-something star Abdou Guitté Seck from Saint Louis, Senegal. He kicked out a rousing set that got the stadium crowd showing off their hometown moves. Seck fronted one high-energy band, and his easy stage manner and searing, powerful voice represented the astounding level of musicianship and showmanship required to rise to the top of Senegal's mbalax scene these days. We grabbed an interview with Seck backstage, which we'll feature on Afropop.org in coming weeks.

Alpha Blondy was a highlight of the evening and the whole festival. Anyone traveling in West Africa in the mid-1980s heard his hits countless times. The familiar reggae rhythm combined with conscious lyrics in English, French and native Ivoirian tongues really connected with the African audience, making him the first African reggae superstar. He preached a kind of African unity philosophy. He was not a Rastafarian fundamentalist but rather his lyrics appreciated all the prophets from the major monotheistic religions. The youth of Dakar in 2004 all seemed to know the lyrics. The spirit was in the house.

Viviane N'Dour, Youssou's sister, came next, doing what one local termed "pop mbalax." She's young. She dresses very sexy, this night in tight, tight gleaming white pants the girls in the crowd pressed forward to the metal gate ten feet from the stage and all looked quite star struck. She had a jaw-dropping, vivacious dancer and a tight, high energy band that cranked out the mbalax. But to my ears, Viviane's singing and her material were under-whelming.

Closing out the night and the whole festival was a stupendous set from Baaba Maal and his band Dande Lenol, a special treat for the Afropop team as it consisted entirely of new material. Baaba really lit up the crowd. After the first up-tempo song, he told everyone, "It's time for some griotism," meaning a serious message. Baaba called his acoustic guitarist forward who played a lovely traditional melody while Baaba spoke to the kids in his role as spokesman for the United Nations' Africa 2015 initiative that aims to cut poverty in half and move towards an AIDS-free generation by 2015. Baaba told the kids that they were the leaders for the future. They were the hope of Africa. I was struck by the rapt attention these Senegalese young people gave Baaba. They seemed to silently accept his call to action. And here was the ancient African tradition of the musician as commentator/historian/advisor meeting the 21st century and all its challenging issues head on--in all, a powerful moment. (See links below to our story of Baaba performing at World AIDS Day in New York last December and another story about Baaba Maal's induction into the Afropop Hall of Fame in New York in March 2004).

Baaba Maal went on to thrill everyone with his high energy songs and leaping, whirling dance moves, spinning on one leg with the other extended. He gave his longtime tama talking drummer Massamba Diop a special showcase by taking his vocal mic to the instrument as Massamba "talked" to the crowd. We in the U.S.have not seen Baaba's electric band in several years as he's been touring his acoustic ensemble (like we heard recently in New York when we inducted Baaba and Mansour Seck into the Afropop Hall of Fame). I chatted with Massamba in the band bus as they got set to pull out of the stadium, driving to near the Malian border in the southeast of Senegal to perform a gig that next night. The consensus among the Afropop crew was that the finale night was the strongest.

As you would expect with the roll-out of such an ambitious project, there were glitches and gaps in the pre-Festival information and no-shows in the production itself, but overall kudos to Festival creators/co-directors Mya Padmore and Seynabou Sy, web partner Jandre Luow and the Ebony team for their vision and persistence.

When someone at the Friday press conference asked why several of the artists originally promoted as part of the Festival--Stevie Wonder, Tracy Chapman, Angelique Kidjo, Miriam Makeba--were not showing, Mya Padmore said that was more like a "wish list." A wish list is one thing but a statement of confirmed artists is another. I hope the Festival does a better job next time of updating their web site with current information when they hear who has confirmed, who has cancelled, who never agrees to perform, so journalists and music loving traveling fans and local fans know about what they are going to get.

An admirable feature of this festival was its alliance with local groups fighting HIV/AIDS. Information and free condoms were handed out at the entrance gates, and a series of messages produced by UNAIDS played over and over on video screens at the sides of the stage during set changes. One of these featured Kenyan star Eric Wainina talking about AIDS education through street theater. The problem was these messages were, for the most part, in English with French subtitles nearly impossible to read from any distance. The common languages in this crowd were Wolof and French so one wonders why the messages were not tailored accordingly. Our informal survey of concert attendees suggested that many got, and appreciated, the message. But others did not. "I thought it was just promotion," said one viewer. Another message showed people of different races and cultures cursing at the camera. The message then read: These are some of the most painful effects of HIV/AIDS: Shame, Hatred, Prejudice, Ignorance. And concluded with "Vivons ensemble" or "Let's live together." These public service announcements were intentionally secondary.

The primary mission of the Coca-Cola Ebony Festival was clearly to celebrate African culture. And it did that beautifully.

At the press conference Friday, Ms. Padmore thanked Coca-Cola profusely for sticking with the project even as the budget ballooned (she declined to answer the question of how much by a colleague from Israeli Public Radio but it must have been at least in the hundreds of thousands of dollars). Curt Ferguson, Coca Cola's regional marketing director based in Casablanca, Morocco, said at that same press conference that Coca-Cola viewed the Festival as a "musical Olympics" for Africa that possibly could move around to other cities on the continent in future editions. Bravo! Let's hope the Festival becomes an ongoing tradition. Africa needs to see more of its own. And Africa needs to create and sustain more events like this Festival that will draw international media attention which in turn spreads the smile and soul and life force of Africa far and wide.

For more info on Coca-Cola Ebony Festival:
www.ebonyfestival.com.

First published: www.afropop.org