All aboard the orient express: a musical odyssey.

Orientation

Thione Seck

Sterns

Cat: STCD1100

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Thionne (pronounced 'Tchon') Seck has been an important figure on Senegal's music scene since the 1960s. Not yet as well known to the world at large as his fellow countrymen Youssou N'Dour, Baaba Maal or Ismael Lo, in Senegal he is generally regarded as the most poetic songwriter and the greatest singer of them all.

His relatively low profile on the world music scene may be transformed by this album, which one critic described as "a masterpiece ... a work that traverses history, geography and global culture with confidence, originality and verve."

With this new album, Seck not only confirms his place among Senegal's greatest artists but also leads international audiences in new directions.

Seck was born into a family of gewels, or griots--traditional West African musicians and praise singers. His great-grandfather's patron was Lat Dor, the monarch of Kaylor, who led the Wolof people's resistance against French colonialism in the 19th century.

Seck began singing in his early teens and his ethereal, melancholic voice was quickly recognised as something special. So much so that in the late 1960s, when Dakar's legendary Orchestre Baobob formed, he was invited to join the new band as one of a trio of vocalists alongside Pape Seck and Laba Sosseh.

It was in Orchestre Baobob, named after the Club Baobab where they were the resident band, that a new sound began to be developed. It was to marry the traditional style of the griot voice to the majestic big-band swing and melodies of Cuban music.

Seck was also singing with another venerable nightclub band, the Stars of Dakar, the resident band at the Miami nightclub--sometimes playing one set at one club before dashing to the other, much to the delight of his diriyanke fan base.

The diriyanke are the fabulously attired, bejewelled and wealthy businesswomen of Dakar for whom Seck was nothing less than their heartthrob superstar.

Take it easy

Nevertheless, Seck retained a more direct connection with his ancestral griot role through a family ensemble where he sang traditional songs typically accompanied by xlam (a type of West African lute) and various percussion. Then, in 1974, Seck dropped his nightclub commitments and with his brother Mapenda formed the group Raam Daan--meaning 'take it easy' but also alluding, through a play on words, to Ramadan, the annual Muslim season of religious fasting.

In the following years Seck and the Raam Daan band helped develop the mbalax sound made so internationally famous by Youssou N'Dour. It is often asserted that the multi-layered complex percussion style termed mbalax originated from Youssou's time with the Etoile de Dakar band (the spin-off band from Stars of Dakar)--but both Ismael Lo's and Omar Pene's bands Super Diamano and Raam Daan were also instrumental in creating this electrifying percussive element of contemporary Senegalese music.

There were some notable differences between these pioneering mbalax artists. Seck's popularity in Senegal continued and his recordings were huge hits on the local market, but his peers were increasingly involved with carving out international careers by releasing their music with French and US recording labels.

It is probably true to say that Seck never pursued international stardom, but perhaps inevitably his music attracted the attention of the master-producer of Francophone West African music, Ibrahima Sylla. Sylla and Seck began to plan the recording of Orientation in 1999. Francois Breant, the French arranger and producer, was brought on board this ambitious project shortly after Sylla and Seck recorded some preliminary tracks in Dakar, subsequent to recording sessions in Dakar, Paris, Cairo and Madras.

From an early age, Arab, Egyptian and Indian musicians had enthralled Seck. Alongside the muezzin's Arabic calls to prayer and the Sufi-inflected chants of the Mourides, he grew up listening to his father's record collection of Egyptian superstars such as Abdel Halim Hafez and Oum Kalsoum.

He was equally entranced by the singing stars of the Bollywood movies that played in Dakar, stars like Kishore Kumar and sisters Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle.

More than 40 Egyptian, French, Indian and Senegalese musicians were involved in Orientation. The result is nothing short of unique in African popular music. Although there will inevitably be comparisons made with Youssou N'Dour's Grammy winning Egypt album, they are as different as chalk and cheese in their approach.

For one thing, Orientation is an album that almost completely dispenses with electric instruments (there is a synthesiser on just two of the dozen tracks) but nonetheless, this album certainly does not lack power. The recording of Orientation was completed in November 2002.

In 2004, Seck released half the tracks on cassette in Senegal before the release of this CD last August. The 12 songs--all written by Seck, some from Seck's existing repertoire, others especially composed by him to evoke Arabic or Indian melodies--alternatively feature mass choruses, brass sections and guest vocalists. From the opening track, Siiw, with a solo oud (a traditional lute) introduction, Seck's wonderful voice leads us on a visionary journey and a celebration of all the ties that bind West Africa to the Orient.