Senegalese musician Baaba Maal.
Baaba Maal
- At Koerner Hall
- in Toronto on Tuesday
It was, as Baaba Maal himself noted, a "simple, intimate" beginning to a concert. Just Maal, dressed in flowing red and gold robes, playing an acoustic guitar and singing with that startlingly powerful tenor voice. But once the band joined him he cautioned, "God knows what will happen now."
What did happen was two hours plus of music that had almost nothing to do with Maal's latest recording, Television, ostensibly the reason for this tour. It's a collaboration with members of Brazilian Girls, and bears a certain resemblance to a Manu Chao-ized version of West African music, à la Amadou & Mariam. But on Tuesday night, even when performing songs from Television, the cool, contained pop-Maal was nowhere to be heard. Instead it was all about jamming, the nine-man ensemble occasionally missing the mark but nonetheless playing as only highly skilled West African musicians can: with propulsive percussive force, sparkling guitar grooves and a sizable dollop of high-energy show-biz antics.
Despite the fun of the last - dance and percussion face-offs, and the unstoppable flirtation of dexterous talking-drum player Massamba Diop -- some of the most affecting moments of the concert actually were the "simple, intimate" ones, such as when Maal led blind griot and long-time musical partner, Mansour Seck, to the front of the stage to sing.
Maal also tried to temper the exuberance with some consciousness-raising, an effort familiar to fans since he regularly proclaims that a musician's role is to give advice. This advice, delivered between increasingly sweaty and jubilant numbers, was mostly a little vague in delivery but the key underlying points were clear: Women are needed on the political stage; we must protect youth and children; our actions determine the future for generations to come. Still, the advice that seemed to connect most powerfully with the audience was of a different sort. Toward the end of the show Maal exhorted, "Everybody who wants to dance can get up and dance. This is how it should be."
Special to The Globe and Mail