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From Africa to America
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U-San Bernadino Sun, From Africa to America >>
Bling don't mean a thing to Faada Freddy.
The 30-year-old lead singer of the Senegalese hip-hop group Daara J says big clocks, expensive jewelry, hood ornaments and other accoutrements won't be hanging around his neck.
"I used to be in poverty in my country. I'm trying to make things better, so I can't claim bling stuff," he says. "I don't develop it. That's not in my heart.
"If I have to bling something, I'm going to bling my soul and my mind, rather than the outside."
Freddy is on the cell phone near Toronto as he, N'Dongo D, 31, and Aladji Man, 30, make their way in the band's tour bus across Canada and the United States to promote their debut American album, "Boomerang."
Hailing from the western-most country in Africa, Daara J is a positive hip-hop crew whose signature sound incorporates jazz, funk, Cuban and Caribbean beats and rhythms. The trio alternates its singing between French, Spanish, Wolof (a Senegal dialect) and English.
Called "Dakar's answer to Black Star" by Time Out NY, the group was named best African act at the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards in 2004. "Boomerang' has spent months on the top of the European world music charts.
The band stops at the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday for a world music extravaganza. The bill also features Nigerian superstar Femi Kuti and genre-music-bending Mos Def.
Kuti displays a spirited mix of funky horns, Nigerian drums, free jazz, and American dance music. His vibrant performances around the world have earned Kuti a place next to his late father, Nigerian Afrobeat legend Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, as an African superstar and political activist.
Kuti rose to prominence in 1985, after filling in at a Hollywood Bowl performance for his father in front of his 40-piece band, Egypt 80. Soon after, Kuti became one of the most prominent artists in Africa, and around the world with his band, The Positive Force.
Kuti's latest offering, "Live at the Shrine," is a CD/DVD collection of great Afro-beat music plus documentary. The release was recorded in front of a hometown audience in Lagos, Nigeria, and includes "1997," a eulogy to his father. The documentary captures the grinding poverty and vibrant spirit in Lagos.
In the late 1990s and early 2000, Mos Def helped revitalize socially conscious and thoughtful rap music more likely to celebrate Afrocentricity than gangsta culture. He also tackled an array of music genres: hip-hop, jazz, rock and blues.
Daara J's take on hip-hop is more roots orientated.
On "Boomerang" s" title track, the troupe proclaims, "Been born in Africa, growing up in America, rap has just gone around to come back." The lyrics challenge the prevailing notion for many people that rap was born in the South Bronx, N.Y., in 1979 with the Sugarhill Gang single "Rapper's Delight."
When Freddy heard some of the early American rap recordings, he says it reminded him of home. It sounded like tasso, Senegal's centuries old vocal style that features rhythmic poetry and can be accompanied by clapping or drumming.
"Our theory is that it traveled to America during the slave era," Freddy says. "All those Afro-Americans who are being credited for rap music, they've been ripped from their native land, which is Africa, the motherland. They forgot about their past, but somehow it was sleeping inside, and one day it got awakened. Then it conquered the world. And now it's back home."
It seems a boomerang of sorts has happened. One figure estimates 8,000 rap groups in Senegal.
"People deserve the truth about the music," Freddy says. "That's the role our music is supposed to play. It's important that we have an international music that allows us a platform to comment on and expose your culture. Hip-hop music is doing it quite well."
But Freddy's not a fan of American gangsta rap.
"I love (American rap) when it's (socially) conscious. But I find it destructive when it (tells) youth to carry guns, when it's calling people to take more drugs and all those materialistic things," he says. "It's not a part of my reality."
The Daara J posse had been chums for a while and even attended school together, all of them intending to be accountants. Instead, in 1994 as the three were sitting in a Dakar club freestyling in the Senegal dialect Wolof and accompanied by a lone drum machine, Freddy suggested the three put their beats into a trio.
"The love of music was stronger than everything. I could be behind a desk counting some money but now I can carry an international message," says Freddy, who sings about justice, community solidarity and freedom. "I can be the voice of the voiceless. I can be the voice for millions and millions and people. I can take it abroad and link people up thanks to the music."
But when he visits the United States, Freddy says that boomerang music effect is mutated.
"Africa is the basis for America's music. When I come to America, I hear how the original music has been transformed, in a positive way. It's freaking in my ears." 07/25/05 >> go there
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