Mbalax
Encyclopedia
Mbalax is the national popular dance music of Senegal
and The Gambia
. Mbalax is a fusion of popular Western music and dance such as jazz
, soul
, Latin, and rock
blended with sabar
, the traditional drumming and dance music of Senegal. The genre's name derived from the heavy use of accompanying rhythms used in sabar called mbalax.
music tradition of "Njuup" (the progenitor of Mbalax), developed in Senegal
in the early 1970s. Like many other francophone West African countries the Senegalese popular music scene was influenced by soul, blues, jazz, R&B, and rock from the United States, varieté from France, Congolese rumba, and Latin pop from the Caribbean and New York (e.g.,pachanga, son, charanga, salsa, and Latin jazz). In this mix of African diasporic sounds Senegalese fans and musicians wanted their own urban popular dance music so they began singing in Wolof
(Senegal's lingua franca) instead of French, and incorporated rhythms of the indigenous sabar
drum (see Mangin). Dancers began using moves associated with the sabar, and tipping the singers as if they were traditional griots.
Among the bands that played this new style, Etoile de Dakar
(starring Youssou N'Dour
and El Hadji Faye), and Raam Daan
(starring Thione Seck
), Xalam II, and Super Diamono. Since becoming popular, both Mbalax and its associated dance have spread to other region such as Mali
, Mauritania
, Ivory Coast and France
. This dissemination has come about through radio, audio cassettes
and televised video clips.
Mbalax instrumentation includes keyboards, synths and other electronic production methods. However, its the Nder,(lead drum,) the Sabar, (rhythm drum), and the Tama (talking drum) percussion, and widely influenced African and Arabic vocalistic stylings that continue to make Mbalax one of the most distinctive forms of dance music in west Africa and the diaspora. Jazz
, Funk
, Latin (especially Cuban) and Congolese pop music influenced the early sounds of Mbalax, today it is also influenced by RnB
, Hip-Hop, Coupé-Décalé
, Zouk
and other modern Caribbean, Latin, and African pop musics. Mbalax artists frequently collaborate with artists from other genres, such as Viviane Ndour
's work with Zouk star Philip Montiero and French/Malian rap star Mokobe. Perhaps the most well known collaboration of all was Youssou Ndour's huge hit with Neneh Cherry; 'Seven Seconds'.
New Mbalax dance movements are constantly emerging, this often occurs with the increasing popularity of a particular song. Patricia Tang describes some of the new movements:
s could perform music. Their traditional role was transmitting oral history, genealogies and social rankings, diplomacy, and storytelling. Today, griots continue to participate in naming ceremonies, weddings, and funerals.
Music is performed using instruments such as drums, balafon
, riti, Tama (talking drum), sabar drum. In the 1970s Western instruments and equipment such as the flute
, electric guitar
, piano
, violin
, trumpet
and synthesizer
have been incorporated into the music, to accompany the dance. In addition to the instrumentation, humming, chanting and singing (in either Wolof, French or English) are used to accompany the music that the dance is done to. The lyrics of mbalax songs address social, religious, familial, or moral issues.
According to author Patricia Tang:
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
and The Gambia
The Gambia
The Republic of The Gambia, commonly referred to as The Gambia, or Gambia , is a country in West Africa. Gambia is the smallest country on mainland Africa, surrounded by Senegal except for a short coastline on the Atlantic Ocean in the west....
. Mbalax is a fusion of popular Western music and dance such as jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
, Latin, and rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
blended with sabar
Sabar
The sabar - from the Serer people in origin, is traditional drum from the West African nation of Senegal. It is generally played with one hand and one stick. Among its most renowned exponents is the Senegalese musician Doudou N'Diaye Rose. The sabar was used to communicate to other villages...
, the traditional drumming and dance music of Senegal. The genre's name derived from the heavy use of accompanying rhythms used in sabar called mbalax.
History and Influence
Mbalax, a type of music that trace most of its technique from the conservative SererSerer people
The Serer people along with the Jola people are acknowledged to be the oldest inhabitants of The Senegambia....
music tradition of "Njuup" (the progenitor of Mbalax), developed in Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
in the early 1970s. Like many other francophone West African countries the Senegalese popular music scene was influenced by soul, blues, jazz, R&B, and rock from the United States, varieté from France, Congolese rumba, and Latin pop from the Caribbean and New York (e.g.,pachanga, son, charanga, salsa, and Latin jazz). In this mix of African diasporic sounds Senegalese fans and musicians wanted their own urban popular dance music so they began singing in Wolof
Wolof language
Wolof is a language spoken in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania, and is the native language of the Wolof people. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger–Congo language family...
(Senegal's lingua franca) instead of French, and incorporated rhythms of the indigenous sabar
Sabar
The sabar - from the Serer people in origin, is traditional drum from the West African nation of Senegal. It is generally played with one hand and one stick. Among its most renowned exponents is the Senegalese musician Doudou N'Diaye Rose. The sabar was used to communicate to other villages...
drum (see Mangin). Dancers began using moves associated with the sabar, and tipping the singers as if they were traditional griots.
Among the bands that played this new style, Etoile de Dakar
Étoile de Dakar
Étoile de Dakar were a leading music group of Senegal in the 1970s.The group was formed in 1979 by Youssou N'Dour and members of the Star Band one of Dakar's best known nightclub house bands of the 1970s...
(starring Youssou N'Dour
Youssou N'Dour
Youssou N'Dour is a Senegalese singer, percussionist and occasional actor. In 2004, Rolling Stone described him as, in Senegal and much of Africa, "perhaps the most famous singer alive." He helped develop a style of popular music in Senegal, known in the Serer language as mbalax, a type of music...
and El Hadji Faye), and Raam Daan
Raam Daan
Raam Daan is a mbalax band from Senegal, Africa. Founded in 1974 by Thione Seck, Raam Daan has risen to become one of the most popular mbalax bands in Senegal ....
(starring Thione Seck
Thione Seck
Thione Ballago Seck is one of Senegal's greatest singers and musicians in the mbalax genre, on par with Baaba Maal and Youssou N'dour although he hasn't achieved the same level of fame outside his country. Seck comes from a family of "griot" singers from the Wolof people of Senegal...
), Xalam II, and Super Diamono. Since becoming popular, both Mbalax and its associated dance have spread to other region such as Mali
Mali
Mali , officially the Republic of Mali , is a landlocked country in Western Africa. Mali borders Algeria on the north, Niger on the east, Burkina Faso and the Côte d'Ivoire on the south, Guinea on the south-west, and Senegal and Mauritania on the west. Its size is just over 1,240,000 km² with...
, Mauritania
Mauritania
Mauritania is a country in the Maghreb and West Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the west, by Western Sahara in the north, by Algeria in the northeast, by Mali in the east and southeast, and by Senegal in the southwest...
, Ivory Coast and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. This dissemination has come about through radio, audio cassettes
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
and televised video clips.
Mbalax instrumentation includes keyboards, synths and other electronic production methods. However, its the Nder,(lead drum,) the Sabar, (rhythm drum), and the Tama (talking drum) percussion, and widely influenced African and Arabic vocalistic stylings that continue to make Mbalax one of the most distinctive forms of dance music in west Africa and the diaspora. Jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, Funk
Funk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
, Latin (especially Cuban) and Congolese pop music influenced the early sounds of Mbalax, today it is also influenced by RnB
RNB
RNB is a three-letter abbreviation with multiple meanings, as described below:* Nankai Broadcasting – , a broadcasting station in Ehime Prefecture, Japan* Rhythm and blues* Contemporary R&B* Russian National Library...
, Hip-Hop, Coupé-Décalé
Coupé-Décalé
Coupé-Décalé is a type of popular dance music originating from Côte d'Ivoire and the Ivorian diaspora in Paris, France. Drawing heavily from Zouglou, Zouk, and Congolese rhythms, Coupé-Décalé is a very percussive style featuring African samples, deep bass, and repetitive, minimalist...
, Zouk
Zouk
Zouk is a style of rhythmic music originating from the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe & Martinique. Zouk means "party" or "festival" in the local Antillean Creole of French, although the word originally referred to, and is still used to refer to, a popular dance, based on the Polish dance, the...
and other modern Caribbean, Latin, and African pop musics. Mbalax artists frequently collaborate with artists from other genres, such as Viviane Ndour
Viviane Ndour
-Family and Background:Viviane Ndour is a Senegalese pop singer who is the former sister-in-law of Youssou N'Dour. She is known by some as the "Queen of Mbalax." She has two children, a boy and a girl, with her ex husband Bouba Ndour....
's work with Zouk star Philip Montiero and French/Malian rap star Mokobe. Perhaps the most well known collaboration of all was Youssou Ndour's huge hit with Neneh Cherry; 'Seven Seconds'.
Mbalax Dance
Mbalax Dancing is popular in nightclubs and social gatherings as well as religious and life cycle events such as: weddings, birthdays, and naming ceremonies.New Mbalax dance movements are constantly emerging, this often occurs with the increasing popularity of a particular song. Patricia Tang describes some of the new movements:
"Examples of such dances are the ventilateur ('electric fan', which describes the motion of the buttocks swirling suggestively); xaj bi ('the dog', in which a dancer lifts his/her leg in imitation of a dog); moulaye chigin (which involves pelvic and knee movements that perfectly match the sabar breaks); and more recently, the jelkati (a dance in which the upper arms, bent at the elbows, move in parallel motion from left to right). Interestingly all of these dance crazes are closely tied to sabar breaks, and some (such as tawran tej) are even named for the vocal mnemonics of the sabar rhythm they accompany."
Music and Instrumentation
Senegalese songs are usually unwritten, and certain instruments or musical styles are reserved for specific genders or age groups. In the past, only griotGriot
A griot or jeli is a West African storyteller. The griot delivers history as a poet, praise singer, and wandering musician. The griot is a repository of oral tradition. As such, they are sometimes also called bards...
s could perform music. Their traditional role was transmitting oral history, genealogies and social rankings, diplomacy, and storytelling. Today, griots continue to participate in naming ceremonies, weddings, and funerals.
Music is performed using instruments such as drums, balafon
Balafon
The balafon is a resonated frame, wooden keyed percussion idiophone of West Africa; part of the idiophone family of tuned percussion instruments that includes the xylophone, marimba, glockenspiel, and the vibraphone...
, riti, Tama (talking drum), sabar drum. In the 1970s Western instruments and equipment such as the flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
, piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
, violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
, trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
and synthesizer
Synthesizer
A synthesizer is an electronic instrument capable of producing sounds by generating electrical signals of different frequencies. These electrical signals are played through a loudspeaker or set of headphones...
have been incorporated into the music, to accompany the dance. In addition to the instrumentation, humming, chanting and singing (in either Wolof, French or English) are used to accompany the music that the dance is done to. The lyrics of mbalax songs address social, religious, familial, or moral issues.
According to author Patricia Tang:
"The rhythmic foundation and primary identifiable feature of modern mbalax is the sabar…in Wolof gewel percussionist parlance, mbalax literally means 'accompaniment'. Within a sabar ensemble, different drums play different roles, and mbalax refers to the accompaniment parts played by the mbeng-mbeng. However, the mbalax part varies rhythmically from one dance to another.
Artists
- Youssou N'DourYoussou N'DourYoussou N'Dour is a Senegalese singer, percussionist and occasional actor. In 2004, Rolling Stone described him as, in Senegal and much of Africa, "perhaps the most famous singer alive." He helped develop a style of popular music in Senegal, known in the Serer language as mbalax, a type of music...
- Thione SeckThione SeckThione Ballago Seck is one of Senegal's greatest singers and musicians in the mbalax genre, on par with Baaba Maal and Youssou N'dour although he hasn't achieved the same level of fame outside his country. Seck comes from a family of "griot" singers from the Wolof people of Senegal...
- Omar PèneOmar PeneOmar Pene is the emblematic lead singer of the Super Diamono. He was born in the working class neighborhood of Derkle, in 1956. In the mid seventies , he joined the Super Diamono, one of the longest running Senegalese popular bands- just as the Orchestra Baobab and the Super Etoile of Dakar...
et Super Diamono - Alioune Mbaye NderAlioune Mbaye NderAlioune Mbaye Nder is a Senegalese Singer. Nder takes his name from the n'der, the drum favoured by his griot father.-Background:...
- Viviane N'Dour
- Coumba GawloCoumba GawloCoumba Gawlo Seck is a Senegalese singer-songwriter and composer who was born in February 1972 in Tivaouane. She is the second best selling Senegalese singer in Senegal after Youssou N'Dour...
- Fatou Guewël
- Fatou Laobé
- Kiné Lam Mame Bamba