EVERY GENRE PROJECT - December 4 - Mbalax

Genre of the Day - Mbalax 🇸🇳

Album of the Day - Jigeenu Ndakaru by Super Diamono (1982)

Spotify Wrapped dropped today to the typical fanfare, but with a noticeable absence: the portion that tells you your top five genres! In lieu of this typical hallmark, Wrapped opted to tell you different predominant moods or vibes you sought out during different months of the year, e.g. pink pilates princess or whatnot, as the social media zeitgeist remains intent on era-fying our lives. A different source I saw attributed this switch to Spotify laying off many of its employees who fine-tuned genre classifications—a job position that chronic Substacking might finally qualify me for! Hopefully, with turning a profit for the first year in its history, the company starts hiring some genre nerds again. This blog’s year is not yet wrapped, but in the spirit of the day, I’d like to thank anyone who reads my little music journeys—this has been the richest and most invigorating musical year of my life.

Today’s genre brings us to Senegal, a seminal country in the history of postcolonial African music. Léopold Sédar Senghor, the country’s first president, was a leader of rarefied intellectual caliber. He was not only versed in political theory and statecraft but a visionary of cultural scholarship and poetry. In articulating his ideas of négritude, a critical framework aiming to raise African national and cultural consciousness to counter colonialism, he often drew upon the importance of genres like jazz in a transnational view of Black music that in turn mirrors the development of today’s genre.

Mbalax (the x being pronounced like the ch in loch) translates from Wolof, the largest native language in Senegal and of its largest city Dakar, simply as rhythm. This succinct name obscures its range of influences, but also works as apt shorthand as the genre has served as a major form of danceable popular music in Senegal since its inception in the 1970s. Simply searching mbalax on YouTube generates a thriving current of contemporary hits using its rhythms and dances. For being a predominant popular form, mbalax’s origins are deeply spiritual: the music grew out of incorporating njuup, music utilized in rites of passage by the Serer people, into foreign rhythms circulating through the popular zeitgeist like Cuban salsa, Congolese rumba and soukous, and American jazz, funk, and soul. Use of the sabar drums and the Wolof language rather than French, in addition to the njuup roots, stamps the genre with local pride. In making space for this syncretic cross-pollination of styles that has grown to fluidly include hip-hop, zouk, dancehall, trap, and Afrobeats, mbalax songs are unhurried affairs emphasizing frequent rhythmic breaks. Figures like Youssou N'Dour and collectives like Super Diamono helped make mbalax a focal point for west African music globally.

Super Diamono’s dub-inflected 1982 Jigeenu Ndakaru opens with the titular track, drawing off of the frenetic energy of the capital city that lends the song its title which translates to “The Women of Dakar.” The crosswires of sound form a rich timbral tapestry between its jazz trumpet harmonies, scintillating keyboards, and dub touches. “Jaraaf” places greater emphasis on riding a rollicking bass line that responds with masterful fluidity to dense hi-hat and snare hits as lead singer Ismaël Lô sparingly weaves in Wolof lyrics, inflated by weighty reverb. Instrumental solos sail free across the set as propulsive drumming holds down the rhythmic anchor, from the electric guitar shredding of the psychedelia-reggae “Ndaw Rabine” to the journey of synth glissandos snaking through “Sayama Nginde.” These free-flowing performances affirm mbalax’s expressive, voracious, and festive spirit, a gripping and eternal manifestation of Senegal’s cultural ingenuity.