Carlou D’s solo career

International album

Paris 

01/07/2010 - 

The Senegalese hip-hop icon, Carlou D, is embarking on the sixth year of his solo career with a new album called Musikr that combines modern music with religious chants. We met up with the singer, who was winner of the titles Best Artist of 2009 and Best Variété Artist at the first Sunu Music Awards last February.

It was 5 p.m. in a fashionable restaurant in Dakar and Carlou D was sitting with his mobile phone stuck to his ear, giving his musicians directions in the lead-up to that evening’s concert. “He’s always on time for the sound check”, explained the restaurant manager. His peers describe him as “highly disciplined” and a “hard worker”. While his colleagues prepared the stage, the Dakar-born artist juggled between photos with fans and telephone calls, his face the picture of concentration. He was arranging the final details of his European tour and the simultaneous launch of his new album, Musikr.

Ibrahima Loucard, alias Carlou D, was born on 13 September 1979 in Dakar. The self-taught, highly modest musician started playing music quite naturally, almost out of duty. “Passion and obligation regarding my family situation brought me to music,” he said neutrally. Carlou D obviously harbours a degree of resentment towards his polygamous father, who quickly neglected his family. “Music is the only thing we have in common,” he went on. “He’s still around and very much alive, but not close to me.”

As a child, Carlou D lapped up the blues, salsa and popular music and still has his pile of LPs dating from the seventies. His eclectic taste encompassed the Senegalese group Baobab Orchestra, American singer Michael Jackson, pianist Ray Charles and more. By the time he reached his teens, school no longer interested him and he left as soon as he could, keen to “find a job and help run the household with dignity.”

Senegal rap

Carlou D started focusing on his true passion, music, at a time when Dakar was vibrating with the rhythm of “galsen rap”. The singer saw how to “get a foothold” in the music industry and made his first stage appearances alongside Ska Blues. Then in 2003, he joined Positive Black Soul, with Didier Awadi and Duggy Tee. They personified the generation of “Boul Falé” (loosely “do your own thing” in Wolof) and found a following. The movement was an expression for young people’s despair in a country shaken by socio-economic crisis. Their music fuelled a certain aggression that struck a contrast with celebratory music and popular dances like Mbalax.

The experienced was short-lived for Carlou D, who embarked on a solo career in 2004. His characteristic was to introduce acoustic sounds into hip-hop style. “What held us back,” he now considers, “was the hardcore thing, because rappers thought that if it wasn’t hardcore then it wasn’t rap” before lashing out: “The trouble with the hip-hop movement in Senegal has always been that the rappers spend their time judging each other.”

Carlou D then made a move towards popular music, and started expressing a growing interest in Mouridsm. The artist is a follower of the Baye Fall* brotherhood and a keen disciple of Sheikh Amadou Bamba, the founder of Mouridism. The culture has a clear influence on his lyrics and appearance. On stage, he often sports dreadlocks and wears a long boubou with a big black necklace.

Carlou D’s mission

The new Musikr album is “a connection between modern music and ‘zikr’, which is spiritual chants or Sufism,” explained the artist, suddenly lighting up with a new energy.  “I try to get young people involved using music. I attempt to be like a teacher, taking bits of the Bible and the Koran and mixing them together,” he went on. Through this “new style”, Carlou D tries to transmit to his audience some of the “spirituality” that Baye Fall members attain. In some ways he feels as if he has a mission “to share this sensation with the rest of the world”.

“I have seen it all: bling-bling American rap involving money, drugs, women, fashion and sport. I’ve seen all kinds of stars, but for me, spirituality is the best”, said Carlou D, who considers that “being spiritual is wellbeing”. Now his music also includes the Baye Fall’s tamtam, known as khine. His next plan is to create an “atmosphere that will take the audience elsewhere”.  The artist imagines it will be “going travelling with music”.

*Baye Fall: a branch movement of the Mouride brotherhood.

Bineta  Diagne

Translation : Anne-Marie  Harper