Orchestral manoeuvres in the dark continent

By MICHAEL CHURCH

The story of how Nick Gold struck gold by helping Ry Cooder to assemble a bunch of septuagenarian soloists to create the Buena Vista Social Club was the recording sensation of the 90s. The record that Gold has just released internationally may be just as stratospheric, and is the culmination of a no less remarkable tale.

We could begin in this ebullient young London impresario's office, where the launch of Orchestra Baobab: Specialist in All Styles was being meticulously prepared.

"My love affair with the band started in the 80s," he says. "I heard a cassette of theirs at a friend's house, and he had it on repeat. It just sucked me in. First I fell in love with the textures and the tunes, then with the guitarist Barthelemy Atisso, who is still one of my all-time favourites for his gorgeous timing, his dynamic tricks, and for the space he leaves, because he doesn't play many notes.

"I loved the way everything sounded off-the-cuff, as though you were eavesdropping on a rehearsal, organised rather than arranged. Though, of course, it was all arranged extremely carefully."

He searched high and low for another copy, found one in a Paris fleamarket, and then, after long and tortuous manoeuvres, got the rights to re-release it in 1989. Pirate's Choice, so named because of the frequency with which its opening track had been pirated, was enthusiastically promoted by world-music DJs Andy Kershaw and Charlie Gillett, and became a cult hit.

But we should begin the story much further back, because it's a perfect illustration of music's capacity to reflect humanity's great enforced migrations. So back to Cuba, where slaves from West Africa were systematically shipped by the Spanish for 350 years. There, African rhythms blended with European songs and dances to create a heady brew which had found its way back across the Atlantic by the 1950s.

In mid-century Senegal, recorded music as opposed to indigenous music was predominantly Cuban, and the newly independent country's nightclub bands adapted it for Wolof songs.

Orchestre Baobab - the name was not then anglicised - was the resident band at the capital's poshest club. "You had to be smart to get in," says Rudy Gomis, the singer-songwriter. "It was all politicians and police and their girls."

Radio 3's Lucy Duran, who was living in Senegal at the time, recalls their impact: "I'd come to West Africa with a strong background in Cuban music, and what struck me about Baobab was that they were playing in a style that felt deeply familiar but was entirely their own reinvention. And their melodies were sublime."

Gomis describes their repertoire thus: "Pachanga, tangos and blues, but we wanted to create a symbiosis of Afro-Cuban and Senegalese music. That's why we brought in griots, to change the colour of the salsa." And as he points out, "Senegalese" was only the umbrella term for a rich regional mix within the band itself.

One player came from Cape Verde, another from Togo, others came from the dry lands of the north, while he was one of three who hailed from the southern province of Casamance. But the results of this cross-fertilisation were ravishing, as Pirate's Choice confirms.

But it also marked the start of their decline. When Youssou N'Dour and his friends arrived on the Dakar scene, proudly flaunting their Wolof identity with their hard-driving "mabalax" sound, the young urban audiences found what they needed.

Meanwhile, marooned in their upmarket ghetto, Baobab lost the plot. As Gomis says: "We were tired. We'd been playing for 24 years and we couldn't agree on which style to continue with. So we went our separate ways. This new CD is to remind people we can still play."

But the path back from the wilderness depended on support from a variety of sources. Jenny Cathcart, biographer of Youssou N'Dour, had long wanted to help the band reform, and Youssou himself felt he owed them something - after all, theirs was the music he'd grown up listening to.

Enter, on a white horse, Nick Gold. "I listened to a demo they did with a stand-in guitarist - it sounded all right, but it wasn't fantastically exciting. I said I didn't want to do anything unless we also got Atisso, and then the problems started.

"Could he leave his job? He hadn't played for 10 years, and when he did do a demo, his guitar sounded horrible, so we had to send him a decent one. I looked at a photograph of him at work which was the same vintage as the Pirate's Choice album, and he was playing a Gibson Les Paul, so I sent him one of those."

Atisso admits that he almost freaked out. "When I was asked to rejoin the band I was very surprised. I put down the phone and ran to my guitar, to see what it felt like. And I found I was completely lost. I couldn't get the chords. I hadn't lost the notes, but my fingers didn't respond as they should.

"So each day after my legal work I went back to my guitar, and after a month I'd regained some confidence: my fingers began working, and my technique came back. Rejoining the band was unforgettable. God is good. When you have the will, he helps you. In life, it's the work you do that counts."

Strengthened by the addition of a brilliant new young singer, the band soon got back into their communal groove, playing to acclaim at Womex. Gold decided to record them in London. He had a brainwave: not only would he weave Youssou into the tapestry, he would also sound out Buena Vista's star, Ibrahim Ferrer.

"I sent him some recordings and he said they were interesting, even though he couldn't get into their rhythm. I played his music to the band, who were enthusiastic, but worried what tune to bring him in on. And I just said don't worry, either he'll fit in or he won't, he's an improviser and he'll pull things in a direction he can cope with." The result was conceived and performed on the day.

Gold explains: "Youssou was bringing in the singers like a conductor - 'Now you sing, now it's you over there.' We did four takes, and the last is the one on the record. All that was overdubbed was Issa Cissoke's saxophone comments on what Ibrahim was doing."

This track, a transmogrification of the mournful but magical Gomis song that opened Pirate's Choice, is the high point of their remarkable new album.

So what next? Will they once more become stars back home, or are they now a band for the world? Lucy Duran thinks the local popularity of Africando's Cuban-style music may help them.

"In 90s Senegal, Cuban music was considered really naff colonial stuff your parents liked, but it's now becoming trendy again. So even in Senegal they may be a big hit."

Gomis can hardly wait to get started: "Our next CD will do different things - reggae, salsa, rumba. We have a lot of surprises up our sleeve. We won't keep the public waiting long."

- INDEPENDENT

* Specialist in All Styles is out now and was given a five-star review in Entertainment last week.