Baaba Maal — Being
Qobuz new release review (March 2023)
To some degree, Baaba Maal’s extracurricular activities have been, for the last decade or so, nearly as interesting as his main gig. To be sure, his three previous albums recorded this century — Missing You (Mi Yeewnii) (2001), Television (2009), and 2016’s The Traveller — have been excellent examples of genteel pan-global fusion that’s both respectful of and unbound by Maal’s Senegalese roots. But in addition to his solo studio output, Maal has also been the voice of both Black Panther movies … literally. As the vocalist on the two “Wakandan” songs featured on the score for Black Panther and likewise on the score for its sequel Wakanda Forever, Maal continued the work he first started in 2001 as the singer on two pieces of Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for Black Hawk Down. When he’s called upon to provide such bits of vocal authenticity to “African” atmospheres both mythical and otherwise, Maal’s approach has consistently been bold, playing to his remarkable vocal strengths, while being removed from the “song-based” limitations of his solo work. Ironically, Maal has been unrestrained when utilized on scores, so it’s not all that surprising that, on Being — an album that Maal says he was unsure he would even make, given the economics and creative challenges of the modern industry — he showed up to the studio ready to take some chances. With his voice in remarkable shape, Maal (who recently repatriated back to Senegal from London) has looked at Afrobeat’s wave of popularity in recent years and decided not do that at all. Instead, he takes a tangentially aggressive approach to these seven songs, with a production aesthetic that (once again) incorporates pan-global beats and amorphous instrumentation. Guests are few and far between on Being (new vocalist Rougi on one track; London collab The Very Best, featuring Radioclit and Esau Mwamwaya on another; Senegalese reggae artist Paco Lenol on a third), focusing the listener on Maal’s insistent vocal approach and the daring musicality here. Veering between haunting, spare atmospherics (“Ndungu Ruumi”), swaying funk (“Boboyillo”), gentle acoustics (“Agreement,” “Casamance Nights”) and full-bodied bangers (“Mbeda Wella,” “Yerimayo Celebration”), Maal seemingly abandons genre altogether on Being, opting instead for a truly individual statement of intent.
