Afropop Worldwide's Banning Eyre reached Baaba Maal by telephone in London, as Maal was preparing to come to the United States with his electric band, Dande Lenol. But with Maal's new acoustic release Missing You just out from Palm Pictures, acoustic music was the subject.

BANNING EYRE: How did this new acoustic record come to be?

BAABA MAAL: After Nomad Soul, I said [to Palm Pictures] I really need to do something that starts just with the guitar and me, something very acoustic. And they were very happy to hear that. So one year before we started recording, I began to write the songs, just naturally. I went back to my family in Podor with my guitar. Sometimes I would go with the hoddu player, sometimes the kora player, and work on a song. But that was just the first impression of the song. The rest comes when we actually start recording and I start to see the place of someone like Kante Manfila, and others.

B.E.: Where did you record this album?

B.M.: We recorded most of the thing in Senegal, in my house there. Most of the music was recorded there. Then some of the musicians were in Paris--Aly Wargue (flute), Lansine Kouyate (balafon), Kante Manfila (guitar). Mansour himself was in Paris, so no problem. I could come and do the same thing there.

B.E.: We know Kante Manfila of Guinea from his work with Salif Keita, and from some great acoustic and electric projects of his own over the years. What does he do on this record?

B.M.: He played on the song "Jamma Jenngii," "Fanta," some other stuff. I think he plays on most of the songs. When I was recording it, I was really thinking about him or Sekou "Bembeya" Diabate. I needed someone who really knows the music of the griots and who plays guitar. Because it's not just Senegalese melodies and rhythms here. It's more West African, more the Manding Empire.

B.E.: Your music is a real education on all sorts of West African tradition. What was new for you on this record?

B.M.: I never experimented with the hoddu like I wanted to do. Like on the song "Allah Addu," the hoddu and the voice is something that belongs to West African culture. When you go to the north of Mali, in the past it was just the singer and one instrument player. We never really did have that on our CDs. On some other songs, like "Laare Yoo," we have a whole section of hoddu, something like four of them playing together. It's like the percussion also. I have used percussionists for a long time, but this is the first time I had something like Dudu Ndiaye Rose, something like 20 percussionists all playing together to make a big orchestra, replacing the kick drum in modern music. It was like a big party out in the open air in Dakar. This is why we needed to do it in the village. Because when you go into the studio, I think you keep a little bit down the power that you can get when you do it in the open air.

B.E.: "Leydi Ma" reminds me of northern Malian music, a bit like Ali Farka Toure.

B.M.: It's the style of song that you can see the color of a lot of different ethnic groups, for example the Fulani and Soninke in Mali, or when you go up near Segou and Mopti, they have these kinds of melodies. It's very Sahelian. In this part of West Africa, I think of people playing a lot of songs about the land, about the life that is connected with the land and the seasons and everything. The meaning of "Leydi Ma" is "Our Land." I'm sure it's a song that Ali Farka Toure will be really pleased [to hear.]

B.E.: What about "Jaama Jengii"?

B.M.: It's something we used to play, Mansour and me, long long time ago--just him and his guitar. I sing, and he answers. It's something we used to play in the night, just like it says in the song--"It is the night"--but what is really interesting is I think is that this style of music comes from the influence of the first time that West African people started to discover Western music, to use the guitar to play chords that are close to Western music, and to bring something new. When you listen, it's something like Cuban and Spanish. The melody is really African, but at the same time, the conception and the line--you can just fit the language and sing in Spanish or French or any other language.

B.E.: You are singing in Pular, but the music makes me think if Guinea.

B.M.: Because I think the Western acoustic guitar came to Fouta from Guinea. I remember hearing that Keita Fodeba was there for awhile and he would bring the guitar and they were all the time playing Guinean songs and that style was played in Fouta. "Jaama Jengii" is a song we wrote together a long long time ago, but we never got the chance to record it.

B.E.: What about the song "Senegal Ngummee"?

B.M.: "Senegal Ngummee" is a prayer. I'm trying to be in the place of a young person who is seeing all these changes coming and I try to think what would be his wish for things to happen--to be healthy, to have a long life, to be the kind of person who can really do something. It's the wish of a young boy facing people going into that new millennium with things changing in Africa. He's seeing himself deeply like an African but at the same time he wants to be a part of what he sees happening all around the world. It means, get up and work. This is not the time to fall down. We must move now.

B.E.: People here are very excited about this record. A lot of your fans are happy to know you haven't lost the acoustic thing.

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