Baaba Maal was a name I learned when I worked in The CD Store. I learned a lot then – world music especially. I knew some stuff already, was well versed in a bit of African, South American and Indian music – but there’s so much. Mansour Seck is a name brand new to me. Only found out about him – and this collaboration – when reading the book.
It’s an album I’ve now spent a lot of time with – apparently first recorded in 1984, and then finally released in 1989 and internationally reissued in 1998…
It’s either a revelation or “garden variety world music” – and maybe it’s both.
I’ve been alternating, playing it lots. It’s great. But I have to plead ignorance – in the sense that there’s just so much stuff out there that we’ll never know, and so this could have been just one more.
But I know it now. And I’m in no way disappointed that I do.