Search - Jimi Mbaye :: Dakar Heart

Striking, richly textured, beautiful African music.

08/31/1998

(5 out of 5 stars)

""DAKAR HEART" is the debut solo album of one of Africa's most intriguing and important pop composers, confirming Jimi Mbaye's status as a figure held in extraordinarily high esteem in the world of Senegalese mbalax. Mbaye is already somewhat well-known outside of Africa - among African music fans, at least - as the lead guitarist and musical alter ego of superstar Youssou N'Dour, with whom he has developed this vocally sweet, rhythmically pugnacious brand of Senegalese pop during twenty years of innovation and globetrotting concertizing. With this record, Mbaye steps out into a personal space of poetry, passion and moral subtlety boosted by an unflagging current of traditional Senegalese musical energy and refined by a graceful and unusual palette of sounds. "DAKAR HEART" will likely extend Mbaye's reputation beyond Africa's borders, and rightfully so, as no Senegalese artist to date, save the gravel-voiced Wasis Diop with whom Mbaye shares so many traits, is anywhere near him in musical intelligence and in ardor for the beautiful."