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From Live 8 to Lincoln Center
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Star-Ledger, From Live 8 to Lincoln Center >>
Although last weekend's Live 8 concerts were supposed to focus attention on problems in Africa, only a handful of African performers were part of the event. At the show in Cornwall, England, Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour organized a concert of African performers including his countrymen, the rap trio Daara J.
Daara J will join Wyclef Jean and DJ Neasso for hip-hop concert Thursday at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. Daara J lead singer Faada Freddy, on the phone from his home in Paris, said the Live 8 shows did give people a chance to talk about Africa.
"We really need to hear from people to find solutions to make better days for Africa," Freddy said. "We participated on behalf of all the Africans, and we had one message to make poverty history."
Freddy said that 400 years of slavery in Africa, coupled with corrupt governments that are supported by some of the "G8" nations -- whose Group of Eight summit meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland, this week was the impetus for the Live 8 concerts -- have brought about much of the disease, hunger and poverty on his native continent. "Some of the Western leaders have helped the corrupt leaders and given them shelter. No matter how much wrong they do, they know they are still protected," he said.
Daara J's music is based in hip-hop, but it's marked by the African Diaspora, including Afro-Caribbean reggae.
The album, "Boomerang" was released last year to positive reviews stateside and in Europe (The Observer newspaper in England called "Boomerang" "one of the hip-hop albums of the century"). The music is performed in English, French and Wolof, one of the languages of Senegal, but the message of hope and understanding needs no translation.
"We've traveled all over the U.S., to New Zealand to see the Maori people, and to South Africa. With the Wolof, Zulu and Mandinka people, we understand that all people on earth are the same people," Freddy said. "We need to understand each other. That's why we consider ourselves a bridge to bring all those other people together."
One person who connected with Daara J's vision is Jean, who is in the midst of preparing for a reunion of his best-selling Jersey-based hip hop group, the Fugees, whose name is a take on "refugees."
"What he was doing was sounding quite correct to our ears," Freddy said. "Wyclef has listened to Daara J, but we haven't had much opportunity to snatch him. But now we're finally going to do it, and we're going to share the stage with Femi Kuti (son of the politically active and often harassed Nigerian musician, Fela Anikalupo Kuti, who died in 1997) and another conscious rapper, Mos Def.
"We're spreading what we're doing in the name of the diaspora," Freddy said. "We're blending our blood and our philosophy."
Audiences are digging the blend.
"We're connecting to people, thanks to the power of the music," Freddy said. "There's one universal language, which is the language of feeling, rhythm and truth. When the music sounds true and we believe in it, the audiences get to share in the good feeling."
-Claudia Perry 07/08/05
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