Palm World Voices: Baaba Maal ［CD+DVD］

The Senegal entry in Palm Pictures' Palm World Voices series of CD/DVD packages naturally focuses on Baaba Maal, the country's major international star. The 11-track, 63-minute CD, dubbed The Best of Baaba Maal, includes tracks dating from 1992 to 2001, including "Minuit," credited to Ernest Ranglin featuring Baaba Maal, with such tracks as "Africans Unite," "Cherie," and "Hamady Boiro" employing some English lyrics, although most of the songs find Maal singing in his native Pulaar language. Similarly, the music features a mixture of Western styles and instruments alongside such traditional African instruments as the kora and talking drum. Baaba Maal: A Voice for Africa, writer/director/narrator Robin Denselow's 39-minute documentary film, which takes up much of the DVD, also emphasizes Maal's twin responsibilities as a national and international figure, following him to his hometown of Podor in northern Senegal and even to a post-midnight concert in Mauritania, but also to concerts in the U.S. (where he is seen playing with Carlos Santana), Europe, Australia, and South Africa over the past several years. The DVD also features three bonus performances from a concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London (the last, "Koni," also featuring Ranglin) that add another 38 minutes of video footage. And the package contains a map of Senegal prepared by the National Geographic Society as well as a 48-page booklet full of striking photographs accompanying a biography and discography of Maal. Taken together, the material makes up not just a compilation of the singer's best work, but also a thorough visual and literary consideration of his art and its place in his own country and the world at large. ~ William Ruhlmann