AFRICA RAPS BACK

Daara J returns hip-hop to the real source. 

Words: Erik K. Arnold

            With all the talk about globalization these days, it’s easy to overlook one of its most positive aspects: the outsourcing of hip-hop to other countries, especially those within the African diaspora.

            The global hip-hop movement—much more visible internationally than it is in America—has not only proven that the culture itself is universal, but it now stands at the point where it threatens to make Western rap all but irrelevant in terms of innovation.

            Daara J is a good case in point.  Superstars in Senegal (which makes them stars in Paris and all French speaking African nations as well), they’ve just released an album, Boomerang, which could do for global hip-hop what the Fugees did for mainstream hip-hop stateside.  Most noticeably present is the degree of cultural authenticity with which they interpolate the artform, while adding touches of reggae, R&B, mbalax, Afrobeat and Wolof rhythms.  Their sound, while slicker than that of a purely traditional African group, is far from lightweight world-pop—although it’s accessible enough for dancefloors from Paris to Dakar.

            Mixing the traditional with the urban, with often-provocative lyrics that assert the young generation’s struggle for self-sufficiency, Daara J has redefined conscious hip-hop in Africanized terms,  which isn’t so much “futuristic” as it is “right here, right now, forever.”  But then, what else would you expect coming from the land of the OGs—that is, Original Griots?

            XLR8R recently caught up with Daara J MC Faada Freddy, who’s been quite busy shuttling between Poland and England, in the midst of a well-received international tour (which takes the group to the US in 2005).  Freddy’s articulate and insightful responses left no doubt that rap music has indeed come full circle in the African oral tradition thousands of years ago.

            “African hip-hop is booming for different reasons,” Freddy explains.  “I think the first reason is that the Africans themselves are inspired towards the music.  In Africa, we used to say that rap music has (already) been mastered in Africa.  Different local musics, such as tasso, kebesso, and basso, which are from the oral tradition, are very comparable to hip-hop.  That’s why all the youth really feel like it’s their own music.”

            According to Faada Freddy, rap really started back in the day—way, way back in the day—in the era of the Songhai realm, along the historic trade route that connected West Africa culturally and socially (before European intervention).  It was along these paths, he says, that the griots traveled , spreading culture throughout the region with word, sound and movement arts.  “The griots used to go from country to another, just like a modern griot.  A rapper is going from corner to corner and he has the same language –the language of the rhymes, and the language of bringing out the truth and exposing it to people, just reflecting the reality.”

            The album’s title, for instance, reflects the reality of the griot’s evolution.  “As I told you, we believe that rap music was born in Africa,” Freddy reiterates.  “Because if the new Afro-Americans are doing rap music, it’s because there is a story, there is a history before it...you might forget some parts of your roots, but you can still have some part of your culture, just some instinctive reflection.”  Rap music, therefore, “is another kind of griotism” for Freddy and, by extension, all MCs from the West African region.  To them, hip-hop means much more than the shallow representations of materialistic values pimped to Western consumers by what Daara J calls “Babylone.”

            “It’s not only about bling-bling and stuff, and disrespect and stuff like that,” Freddy says.  “It’s for us another way to get out of misery.  To get the people informed about the political area, or many other areas that the Africans are so far ignorant to.  Hip-hop has another image.  It’s really spiritual and political music that helps the people really get through.”

            From the perspective of an African rapper, hip-hop is civilization unto itself.  “Before the slavery era, we had that oral tradition in Africa that used to be developed by the griots,” Freddy continues.  “That’s why we finally concluded that it was just like a slumbering African art; one day, it exploded to go all over the world and come back to Africa.  So it’s like a boomerang that you throw away, and it bends around the world to come back to Africa.”

Daara J’s Boomerang is out now.  www.wrasserecords.com.