I often get asked why I listen to
African music when I can't understand the language. It's pretty simple, really
- when the music is compelling enough, the words simply don't matter. And often
enough I find out that the words are also compelling when I can dig up English
translations, but I don't really seek them out, because at its best the music
slays all by itself. That's certainly the case here, with this album sung in
the Wolof language. The band - Guelewar Band of Banjul (or just Guelewar on
some records) - doesn't have a lot written about them and I know only slightly
more about the group than about the words.
Bandleader
Laye N'Gom started his musical career in the late 1960s, eventually finding his
way in the 70s to the successful band The Alligators. After the departure of
several members, the Alligators fused with the Super Eagles to become Super Alligators.
By 1973, after more personnel changes, they renamed themselves Guelewar (Wolof
for "noble warrior") and began infusing their sound with the Western
influences of rock, funk, and soul. In 1975 they broke up, reforming a year
later with yet more new members and finally released their first recordings in
1977. In 1979, two more albums followed - Warteef
Jigeen was one of them - and the band continued through 1982 when they seem
to have disbanded and Laye N'Gom (now known as Abdel Kabirr) went on to a solo
career. It's more complicated than that too - I'm not even sure what's accurate
in this data. N'Gom provides the dates I mentioned in one reissue's liner
notes, but the fairly authoritative Discogs site pegs their first album as 1980
and this one as 1981, so either they got released in The Gambia and maybe also
surrounding Senegal earlier (and N'gom is correct) but elsewhere later (and so
Discogs could also be correct). Or N'gom's memory of things that happened
almost 40 years ago is hazy. Or whoever entered the data in Discogs is just
wrong. This helps point up why I don't sweat little details like understanding
the language - you can never really get to the bottom of it anyway, so why
worry?
So
let's now talk about what we do know. The killer title cut - the shortest thing
on the album at a mere 6:51 - starts off the album strong with the horn blast of two saxophones (Laye Salla and Bass Lo Fara
Biram) supported by a supple bassline (Malick Njock Njie), with drums (Adama
Sall Adu) and percussion (Alieu Chan N’Gom and Koto Biram N’Gom) clattering
funkily in the pocket in the background to kick things off before Moussa
N’Gom’s soulful vocal comes in. The saxes drop out, and the voice and rhythm section
(plus some restrained guitar from Moussa Njobdi Njie) take things for a few with
an occasional sax commentary. At about the four-minute mark, Laye N’Gom’s buzzy
synthesizer makes its first showing in the proceedings in a fine solo and the
horns return in a grand fashion, then everything comes together for the last
minute to take things out. Twice again on the album they return to this kind of
driving funk - on "N.T.C. The Gambia," which features fuzz guitar,
more enticing synth, and a sax solo in addition to the usual unison horn lines,
and "Jilanna" which follows right on the heels of "N.T.C."
and makes for a killer 17+ consecutive minutes of the album.
Around this they also essay a slow groover with "Leen Te
Koun," which throws heavy emphasis on the 1, just like George Clinton
would have it, and provides a showcase again for Moussa N'Gom's vocals trading
off with Bass Lo Fara Biram, who sets aside his sax for a bit to take the mic.
There's also the 12:01 of the slow ballad "Mamadu Bitike," another
feature for both vocalists that finds everyone in the band working toward the
total moody effect of the music rather than flashy soloing for the first
two-thirds of the song before the percussionists come in at about 8:15 and
things kick into a high gear and cut loose. The record closes on " President
Diawara" which though I don't speak Wolof, I have to assume is in honor of
the first President of The Gambia, Dawda Jawara (Diawara in some Anglicized
spellings), under whose leadership as Prime Minister The Gambia achieved
independence from the British before the country created the office of
President, to which he was elected. This song has the most guitar-y solos of
the album from Moussa Njobdi Njie (who elsewhere mostly works in deference to
the song), plus Laye’s weird synths and more solo sax - everything they the
group has done throughout the album is pulled out again at the end to recap
what we’ve heard.
All
accounts I've read piece together a view of Guelewar as an influence on music
throughout The Gambia and Senegal - their early live shows helping form the
blueprint for the Senegambian music that would come to be known as mbalax, and those shows were also an
acknowledged influence on the primary superstar of mbalax, Youssou N'Dour. Their recordings, hard to find for decades
but this one recently reissued by the Austrian PMG label, show them to be one
of the most consistent recording acts of the time, with not only Warteef Jigeen out there, but a (now out
of print) compilation called Touki Ba
Banjul : Acid Trip From Banjul To Dakar that cops the faster half of this
album both superb, and a live album of material from 1982 released by Teranga
Beat in 2011 only lesser by virtue of slightly inferior (though by no means
bad) sound. Do I understand what's being sung about? No. Do I still
after picking up these three releases have a clear picture of the band's
history? No. Does it matter? Not a bit; not when the music speaks this clearly.
-
Patrick Brown
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