Hip-Hop in Senegal

August 02, 2005

Hip-Hop in Senegal

Can anyone confirm that these guys are really this influential over there?

Rap artists spearhead Senegal's quest for change
Faada Freddy has a message for Senegal's leaders: If they don't keep their promises they can expect a tightly rhymed tongue-lashing from his fellow rappers. The threat is more intimidating than it sounds.

Shunning their American counterparts' obsessions with gangsters, guns and girls, Senegalese rappers are among the country's loudest campaigners for social justice.

Already the vanguard of West Africa's explosive hip-hop scene, their voices are only going to get louder in the run-up to elections in 2007 when President Abdoulaye Wade is widely expected to seek re-election. He may need their help.

"It's not over," Faada Freddy told Reuters at his studio in the capital Dakar, a city perched on the Atlantic shoreline.

"When the rappers see that Abdoulaye Wade's party isn't doing its political job in the way we want, the rappers gonna whip him again, give him a slap in the face and say, 'We're here with our tongues to correct you when you're not acting right, and don't forget that we're still here,"' he said.

Expounding on the power of hip-hop, Faada Freddy, singer with Senegal's most successful rap group Daara J, remembers how rappers went on their own campaign trail encouraging young people to vote in the 2000 elections.

In their own eyes at least, the artists take at least some of the credit for ending four decades of rule by former president Abdou Diouf's Socialist Party and installing Wade's Senegalese Democratic Party in its place...

Posted by jsmooth995 at August 2, 2005 11:33 AM | TrackBack

Comments

eh. Why ruin it for everybody?

Posted by: Hashim at August 2, 2005 12:48 PM

They couldn't possibly be as ineffective as the 'Vote or Die' campaign.

Posted by: Joe at August 2, 2005 08:18 PM

somethin' is goin' on...??
a matured and a politically-aware hip hop culture?!
what next?..consciousness? unity?

Posted by: akil at August 2, 2005 08:20 PM

They just do what they wanted to do...
Its their right to speak if there's something wrong in their government.

Posted by: burds at August 2, 2005 09:58 PM

burds: Now that's a novel concept.

Posted by: George at August 3, 2005 06:09 AM

Oh, snap, I just saw these dudes last week!

Posted by: George at August 3, 2005 06:10 AM

I love their disc, but will miss their tour:
http://www.rockpaperscissors.biz/index.cfm/fuseaction/current.tour/project_id/179.cfm

If you speak French, there's a lot on them here:
http://www.senerap.org

Posted by: Pete Scholtes at August 3, 2005 04:38 PM

I'm from S�n�gal like Hashil knows and I came to France to study law in College.

The rap movement began pretty early here as well when people just understood that they could do something other than mbalakh.
The first one were actually PBS, positive black soul with their first hit, Give it to them (djokh ko).
We just saw them (daara j)becoming hugely popular around 1997 or so when they were the first ones to successfully blend rap, rnb and dancehall.
To say they are influencial is an understatement.
They may be the biggest group in here along with
Positive Black soul and Pee Froiss.
In The Name only, Daaraa J means School and y'all
can guess what Positive Black Soul means.
The Thing is that all our groups sing in woloff, french and english.
But here if your rap is not politically relevant, you're not going to last very long.
We had some people that tried the hardcore gangsta stuff and failed miserably.
Our hip hop needs to be catchy, political and humourous at the same time. I've always said that if someone could translate it to american people, we would be hugely popular there.
The last rapper they are talking about is actually a buddy of mine called NIX. He was in my high school and is the closest thing to a crossover you can get.
The last president was democratically removed but the rappers really helped.
I was too young to vote but I remember three whole days of rap concerts to exhort the youth to go and vote.

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