Awadi

• Last Thursday night I went with a group of American volunteers to the Centre Cultural Francais for dinner and a concert. The food itself was decent if over-priced. I ordered Thai beef curry and instead got beef maffe (a Senegalese peanut sauce) but, it’s all good I like maffe. The service was horrendous. In countries where you don’t tip that is usually the case, but this time the waitress acted like we stank. She stayed away from our table the whole time, only to stand by the table after she brought the check looking annoyed as we tried to divvy up the bill.



• The concert, however, was excellent. The main act was Awadi, a Senegalese rapper and one-half of the eponymous Senegalese hip hop group, PBS (or Positive Black Soul). He was backed by a live band and had several guest artists share the stage with him. The band didn’t limit itself to hip hop either, Awadi sang as well as rapped to funk, coupe decale and mbalax backdrops. They even ended their set with a punk rock song criticizing political corruption in Senegal. There was a even a kora player/djembe drummer/rapper who was wearing one of those caps with a big, shiny dollar sign. Even though it was technically a Senegalese hip hop concert, with all of the locks, fatigues, and Red, Green & Gold on stage I could have sworn I was at a roots reggae concert in Brooklyn. The only give away was that Awadi had a white drummer and two white dudes on guitar (and the air was too clear for it to have been a reggae jam). The guests included a bunch of Senegalese rappers rapping in both French and Wolof, a couple of R&B-style singers, and even a singer from Congo-Brazzaville who sang whatever the music of Congo-Brazzaville is (someone please enlighten me, the music was good, I don’t mean to clown the Congolese) and who then played this instrument that looked like two small, glass milk bottles glued together. He sang beautifully and the bottles worked too, although it definitely looked like something bored schoolchildren would do during lunch than a professional instrument. My favorite part of the night was when Awadi criticized France, Belgium, the CIA, George Bush, Tony Blair, and Senegalese politicians of various crimes (my French is not good enough to know what exactly) and at some point he said something particularly incendiary that drove all the young Senegalese men in the crowd wild, but made all the French in the audience just squirm in embarrassment. Of course he finished his left-wing hip hop attack by thanking the concert’s corporate sponsors, Nokia, Orange, etc.
  Awadi was the rapper who made the great song protesting the terrible conditions that lead many Senegalese to risk dangerous sea voyages in fishing boats in order emigrate illegally to Europe. Some of you may have already seen the slide show that goes along with the song, but for those of you that haven’t click here for the song and here for the story.