Vagabonde

Hasn’t the world now heard every possible permutation of the nexus of bands that revolutionised Senegalese music in the 1970s, transforming it from mere Latin copyism into the national pop sound? And wasn’t Mar Seek, sometime lead singer of Étoile de Dakar, an essentially minor figure?

This music, however, isn’t quite what you’d expect. Rather than lumpen Senegalised son montunos and gravelly horns, the band Super Cap-Vert, heard all the way back in 1969, give us romantic Latin songs rendered very simply on electric guitars and percussion, sounding at times like a stripped-back Orchestra Baobab, which can’t be bad. The 18-year-old Seck’s striking vocal presence, founded on an otherworldly falsetto, backs up his claim that he provided much of Youssou N’Dour’s original inspiration. There’s a heartfelt rendering of Fonseca’s ‘Sibouten’, a first outing for Seck’s signature composition ‘Vagabonde’, and the flute-led ‘Tira Tira,’ which hits a dark, chugging, primitive groove. The concluding trio of later numbers with the better-known Star Band and Number One de Dakar ends with the glorious early mbalax of ‘Li Loumouye Nourou’, complete with slippery guitar and blaring horns. What might have been a footnote feels like a significant contribution to our knowledge of an era.