RFI Musique - - Senegal - Wasis Diop, the musical mystic

Wasis Diop, the musical mystic

New album: Judu Bek

Paris

30/05/2008 -

Wasis Diop, poetic songwriter and musical mystic, is viewed as something of an outsider in his native Senegal. But that is just the way it suits him. On his new album, Judu Bek, the Senegalese singer modulates his deep, rich tones as he chronicles the life of his contemporaries. RFI Musique talks to one of Senegal's most original recording artists.

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RFI Musique: Can you tell us something about the cover of your new album, Judu Bek?
Wasis Diop: Well, you have to go back in time a bit, these kinds of schools don't exist any more. And you have to make a leap in geographical terms, too. The photo was taken in Senegal… I'm supposed to be in the photo somewhere, but I can't work out who I'm meant to be… The only person I can definitely identify in the picture is my cousin. I don't think I'm in the frame actually. I've sort of dropped off the edge…

So even at that early age you were already outside the box?
That's how Senegalese people see me and I think they're perfectly happy with that. I have to admit, I'm a bit of an extra-terrestrial outsider - even in my own eyes! I never go round saying that I'm a singer, simply that I'm someone who uses his voice. Griots are natural born singers. They start at a very early age. But that wasn't the case with me and that's very liberating because it means I'm free to do what I like. I'm a contemporary Senegalese singer and my compatriots are aware that I've created a style of Senegalese music that didn't exist before I came along. But no matter what I do my sound always draws on the roots of traditional Senegalese songs.

When I was little, I'd love to stay awake at night and listen to the men sitting round singing in the dark. When I compose my own material I don't use folklore as a basis, but I draw on my own personal 'feeling' which has obviously been influenced by what I've experienced in my life. Obviously certain childhood memories and the voices I heard singing in the night helped form what I carry within me. My adventures and the people I've met in the course of my travels around the world have influenced me, too… But at the end of the day I'm Senegalese and that means that there's a dimension to my work that reflects that identity in terms of the timbre, the depth and the message in my songs. Don't forget that I sing in Wolof (Ed.: the most widely spoken language in Senegal). I'd say that the melodic contours of my songs are very much shaped by the language I sing in...

In musical terms, though, your new album is open to influences from the four corners of the world…
That's because I'm a universal being. I love cities, I love people, I love authenticity. But I don't really like the idea of mixture and fusion. That's why I'm not a fan of 'world music.' I believe that an artist should be able to offer what he is, where he comes from, as a gift - in complete and utter freedom!

If you had to fix one defining moment from your childhood, what would it be?
When I look back on my childhood what I remember most vividly are the moments when I went off on my own and wandered so far from home that I left the murmur of civilisation behind. Suddenly, standing there with the sun beating down directly above me I heard this sort of soft whistling noise. It was a vertical sound coming from the sky or the horizon, from ten different directions at once. It was a sort of sound halo hovering in the air and it rang so clear and true that I can still hear it when I think about it today… It was just so present, so there, but nothing we know could have produced that sound. Maybe it was simply the sound of the universe - a sound we can only hear when there's complete and utter silence around us!

It's interesting that your most vivid memory should be a sound memory… You've composed a lot of film soundtracks in your career, do you need images when you work on your film music?
I'd say that each and every song I write is like the music for a film that doesn't exist. I feel as if all my music is written as soundtracks for imaginary films. My lyrics are always a bit escapist - not in terms of me escaping in my imagination because my songs are always anchored in the concrete, but they're escapist in the sense that I'm seeking a poetic reality. I'm on a quest for the sublime. I'm looking for something that will answer all my questions. And first and foremost of these questions is: why are we alive?

How did you set about recording your new album?
I simply took my time and followed my gut feeling. On an album there are always lots of fragments, diverse bits and pieces that seem to come together you're never sure how… Some songs on Judu Bek are old songs, others are brand new. I wrote Anna Mou, for instance, back in 2007. What happened was I was in Bamako and I got to know a prostitute who was living next door to the hotel where I was staying. She ended up becoming a friend. That woman was forced to sell her body to survive. And in the song I touch a bit on her personal story and the lives of other prostitutes who don't have anywhere to take their clients. These women had no other choice but to go off into the millet fields with their customers…

There's another song on Judu Bek called Jiné Ji, about the demon we have in all of us, a demon we actually come to protect in the end. It's as if we don't want to let our personal demons go because somewhere down the line we think we need them. It's a cover of a song by my fellow countryman El Hadj Ndiaye. And then there's So Lala, a song I wrote about four years ago now. It's a song that came to me in a dream and I had no end of trouble setting it to music. Then, in a different vein, there's Automobile Mobile, a fantasy - but a very serious kind of fantasy - about human folly and the madness of consumer society.

How do you explain the fact that in the Diop family you turned out to be a musician and your brother, Djibril Diop Mambety, became a well-known film-maker?
We were both brought up in touch with shamanism, in touch with our extended family, with the invisible world, with nature, with life itself. Djibril always used to say we were twins. And that's why I decided to pay a sort of personal tribute to him on L’Ange Djibril (Angel Djibril), which is an adaptation of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. It's as if Djibril and I came from the same egg, even though we were actually born years apart. He's several years older than me. I believe that the reason I accepted to be born was because I knew there was someone out there waiting for me. As a child, I was fascinated by the things Djibril saw. He had this totally open mind, a real position on things, as if he had already found the subjects for his films. Djibril was born an intellectual - and I was born a mystic!