Senegal’s Abdou Mboup: master of the griot “cell phone”
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Abdou Mboup’s skills as a percussionist and kora player have led to collaborations with the likes of Johnny Clegg, Claude Nougaro, Nina Simone and Michel Pettruciani. After 25 years in the U.S. he’s returned to France to build his career in Europe. He talks to RFI about his new album African Lullaby and the role of the tami (talking drum) in his native griot culture in Senegal. “I like to call it our cell phone,” he says. Mboup grew up in a griot family in Kebemer, north Senegal, playing the drums in the courtyard from the age of three “like every griot kid”. The tami (talking drum) was used to spread messages from village to village. “Whatever the rhythm people could understand [whether] it was about a wedding, death or a snake biting someone. That’s why I’ve always said it was our cell phone.” His uncles were master drummers, his grandmother an accomplished singer, and he went on to join Xalam, Senegal’s top band in the 1970s. “I was the first musician to incorporate the African percussion into mbalax [a popular dance music],” Mboup remembers. “I composed the first hit in the history of mbalax,” it was Daida , […]
