Seydina Insa Wade
Label: Blue Pie Productions
Artists Genre: Acoustic
SEYDINA INSA WADE is a monument of modern Senegalese
music, a song writer whose texts and melodies have
influenced all of his country’s major artists not
least Youssou N’Dour, Baaba Maal, Ismael Lo, Les
Freres Guissé, Pape and Cheikh and more recently a new
generation of rappers including his own nephew El
Hadji Man of the group Daara J.
Born in Dakar in 1948 into a Lebou fishing family,
Seydina grew up in the popular quarter of Gueule Tapée
near the port of Soumbédioune. The only son of elderly
parents, he recalls that for a long time he believed
his mother was his grandmother. His father died when
he was six years old.
Seydina refers to the Gueule Tapée area as the “Harlem
of Dakar” for many of the musicians we know today were
born and bred in that vicinity including Charley
Ndiaye and Abdoulaye Mboup who went on to join
Orchestra Baobab but who began their musical careers
along with Seydina in the Rio Sextet, named after the
nearby Rio cinema. Seydina’s next group was Calypso
Jazz, and in 1966 he made his first concert appearance
at the famous Festival Des Arts Nègres organised in
1966 by President Léopold Sédar Senghor and which
welcomed musicians and artists from the diaspora
including Dexter Gordon.
Seydina’s only school was the koranic school where he
learned to recite the Koran and write in Arabic
script. He recalls fashioning his pen from reeds and
making ink from sugar and soot collected from cooking
pots. Seydina speaks French but to this day he
continues to use his Arabic script phonetically
instead of writing in the French alphabet. His early
songs reflected the melodies of the Layenne religious
community to which he belonged.
Seydina was greatly influenced not only by the Cuban
music that was in vogue in Dakar during his
adolescence but also by the top groups from the entire
West African Region including Bembeya Jazz from
Guinea, Ifang Bondi from the Gambia, and the West
African Cosmos. He was particularly intrigued by the
flute playing of Boncana Maiga from Mali who had
trained in Cuba.
By 1968 when a wind of change was blowing through
world politics, Seydina was sympathizing with the
intellectual left in Senegal, in particular the family
of Omar Diop Blondin. By now a well known figure in
Dakar’s artistic community, Seydina befriended the
film maker Djibril Diop Mambety and the conceptual
artist Issa Samb otherwise known as Joe Ouakam. So
enthralled were Seydina and Issa with each other`s
company on their first meeting that they decided to
walk as they talked. Two days later they ended up in
Thies some forty miles from Dakar.
Seydina was establishing himself as the pioneering
voice of Senegalese folk music sung in Wolof. His
texts raised social issues that were controversial at
the time such as circumcision and slavery. But the
songs including his early hit “Khandiou” were also
charming portraits of Senegalese life and of
Senegalese people sung with style and humour. In 1974,
Seydina’s composition “Tableau Ferraille” was
boycotted by the state radio station but was chosen by
film maker Cheikh Ngaido Ba for the soundtrack of his
film of the same name.
Always curious and versatile, Seydina moved from the
original Xalam 1 group to the Negro Stars, and La
Plantation. In the early nineteen seventies, the
millionaire businessman Ndiouga Kébé opened a
nightclub on the fringes of the Medina called the
Sahel and he invited Seydina to be part of the
resident Sahel band.
The high point of Seydina’s early career was the
formation at the beginning of the 1980s of the group
TABALA, an acoustic trio which included the talented
young guitarist Oumar Sow and a promising
percussionist called Idrissa Diop. Those who attended
their innovative shows agree there has not been an
acoustic group to equal them before or since.
An album called “Yoff” was recorded and a patron, Eric
Sylvestre, organised a tour of France, Switzerland and
Italy. Subsequently, Seydina Wade and Idrissa Diop
stayed in France while Oumar Sow returned to Dakar to
join Youssou N’Dour and his band The Super Étoile. In
Paris Seydina spent six years with the group Xalam II
in the estimed company of the guitarist Cheikh Tidiane
Tall, keyboard players, Henri Guillabert and Jean
Philippe Rykiel and fellow singers Coundoul and
Souleymane Faye. Their innovative blend of African
music and jazz makes a significant contribution to the
story of modern Senegalese music.
While living in the Rue Rene Boulanger in Paris,
Seydina used to see a young girl leaving her apartment
each morning with a cello under her arm. One day he
introduced himself as a musician and offered her one
of his cassettes. Hélène Billard was studying
classical music but she and Seydina were soon firm
friends. A storyteller Mamadou “Tommy” Diallo invited
them to perform with him at the festival Contes et
Musiques in Lyon and thus began an abiding interest in
storytelling and children’s entertainment. From 1991
Seydina and Helene worked together as a duo named
Jawaale
In 1995 Seydina`s album “Libaas” was released by the
Paris based label Samarkand.
In 2002, Seydina was invited by Frédérick Rousseau to
perform on his album “Travels”. Rousseau had worked as
a studio engineer and musician with Vangelis and Jean
Michel Jarre. He had collaborated on the sound tracks
for films notably “Blade Runner” and “1492 Conquest of
Paradise” by Ridley Scott. But from 1992 Rousseau was
working on his own compositions exploring musical
ideas from other cultures especially the Far East and
Africa.
When the art gallery/performance space Jokko, 5 Rue
Elzevir, Paris 3 opened in early 2003, its owner
Valérie Schlumberger invited Seydina to perform
regularly and to coordinate the music programme
It was with great emotion that Seydina and Oumar Sow
met up again in Dakar in January 2003 to perform for
the first time in over twenty years at the newly
opened club Just 4 U. Their reunion was filmed by the
Senegalese film maker Ousmane William Mbaye who in the
summer of 2003 completed a beautifully crafted
documentary entitled “Xalima – La Plume”. Filmed
entirely in Senegal, it affords Seydina Wade the
opportunity of introducing the places, and the people
who have been important influences in his life and
music. It includes sequences about the recording of
Seydina`s latest album. The CD “Xalima” also reunites
Xalam II members Seydina Wade, Souleymane Faye
(“Samme”) and Jean Philippe Rykiel. Jean Philippe
Rykiel will be well known to African music fans as the
arranger on Salif Keita`s album “Soro”. It includes
the Frédérick Rousseau/Seydina Insa Wade
collaboration, “Ginkgo Biloba”
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