This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen magazine #100 (June/July 2002). the magazine is available on newsstands and by subscription.

Tearing through the boisterous World Music Festival circuit this past summer with his electrified band, Da'ande Lenol ("Voice of the People"), Senegalese graphic and movement artist-composer-dancer-guitarist-poet-singer Baaba Maal came across as a kinetic blur. What a delightful reversal to find him on this winter's night seated, acoustic guitar in lanky lap, alone onstage and fingerpicking tranquil notes. Opening with "Baayo/The Orphan" from his 1991 traditional West African album of the same name, Baaba Maal's countenance was calm, while his clear, high, prayerful voice reached deep into a melodious stream finding the primal pain of losing loved and respected parents. In the case of "Baayo," the mother also had the role of song-maker and teacher, while as in Maal's life, the father was a fieldworker who became the village mosque's designated caller to prayers due to his skill at making and singing the songs used to lure the worshipers.

Singing in Pheul-Pulaar (a.k.a. Fulani language), Maal's lyric on "Baayo" opens "If God could turn me into a pigeon/ A golden pigeon or a turtle dove/ I could fly to my homeland/ At Douwayra/ Back home where my folks are…" The smoothly picked melody changed, though barely perceptibly, as the thumbed hypnotic rhythm flowed, steadily underlining Maal's vocal cadences. However, an edge of recognizable child's fear and disorientation entered Maal's voice. He transported a gently bobbing overcrowded dance floor and balcony, hanging on every foreign word, which nevertheless lost no accuracy in conveying his emotion: "While I was in France/ Learning more about art and life/ One terrible phone call/ Summoned me home/ Where I found/ My mother was already dead and buried."

The specter of death is transmuted into a communal experience that can accommodate joyful life in Fulani and multilingual Senegalese culture. The dearly departed enter a familiar village continuum of soulful spirit guides, who remain useful and accessible. While Baaba Maal does not come from a griot family, his mentor and longtime musical partner, Mansour Seck, does. The azure-robed blind West African guitarist-griot joined Maal seated downstage. Their voices and mesh of steel-string music danced upward through the Fillmore to the back balcony like sparks from a campfire spiraling into a starry sky.

Next to join the sacred song circle was Kauwding Cissokho, who took a seat stage left and raised an immense kora, or Manding harp. This West African instrument could've saved the special effects consultants on Close Encounters of the Third Kind a lot of money and trouble. Looking up at the kora raised on the high stage, it might easily have been mistaken, if filmed in close-up, for a mothership from some far constellation. Cissokho's two-handed ballet drew from the kora's strings sweetly resonant metallic notes that tended to hang in the air between the guitars and voices buoyed by its mellow woodsy sustain.

Barou Sall entered stage right armed with his hoddu (known as xalam in the Wolof language, and ngoni in Bambara). He found a surprisingly expansive octave range on the small lute. Sall frequently took the role of lead soloist ringed by four acoustic guitarists and Elhadj Niang's anchoring bass guitar. Unlike the electrified Da'ande Lenol band, where Massamba Diop on talking drum would converse at length with a vocally improvising Maal in cutting duets, it fell to Sall to answer on hoddu when Maal strolled over, mike in hand, ready to do the dozens. The crowd delighted in Sall's pluck, both digital and facial, as competitive one-upsmanship flashed across his most expressive face whenever he got his tiny lute to top the vocalyse being spun out of Maal's verbose vibrato.

The Fillmore audience was treated to a percussive bonus. While no drummers were touring in the acoustic band, when a mystery percussionist strolled onstage from the wings with a duffel bag and proceeded to remove a conga and smaller jug drum, he was graciously welcomed by the stringmen. Some astonishing African dance moves also crossed the stage from members of the audience, who occasionally took their own solos, drawing approval from Maal and his band. Nobody overstayed their welcome, and when a barely three-foot-tall pre-schooler drew a standing ovation after getting up her nerve to try a choreographed routine, she was even called back by the band and the roaring, jammed house for a teeny-stepping encore.

The musical highlights came on the new numbers from Maal's earthy return to form Missing You/Mi Yeewnii [Palm CD 2001]. His songwriting tribute to women's creativity on "Mamadi," as well as memories of growing up in his hometown of Podor by the River Senegal, which lay along the border with Mauritania, carried Moorish musical accents. Laid-back guitarist Mamadou Gaye's instrumental vocabulary proved vast, though his playing was never intrusive or pushy. He has clearly spent his lifetime exploring various diverse West and North African guitar styles. To witness Mamadou Gaye segue behind Mansour Seck's glorious lead vocals or Seck's harmonies with Maal into a fiery Flamenco flourish, Berber rip-rap figure, or concise Malian Manding tangent is to feel the disparate West African elements surging together patterned by a rare and intuitive guiding intelligence.
— Mitch Ritter (Concord, CA)