Togo - West Africa - page 904

Serge Kassy and Tiken Jah Fakoly. Ivorian hip-hop (think outfits such as 2431 and All
Mighty) includes the gangsta-style rap dogba, which contrasts with the socially aware,
anti-bling Wolof rap of Senegalese outfits such as Daara J and Positive Black Soul. In
strife-torn Mali, rap music is now at the vanguard of messaging the population through
music, including clarifying the political situation in the North and in Bamako. Rappers
Amkoullel, Mylmoand Les Sofas de la Republique have much to say. Daddy Showkey is
a well-known Nigerian reggae artist, and Nigerian hip-hop musicians include the duo P-
Square along with Ice Prince and JJC aka Skillz. Rap Nigerien is a melange of different
languages spoken in Niger - as deployed by groups such as Kamikaz and Metaphor - and
covers such topics as forced marriages, child labour and corruption. The Gambia is the
self-styled reggae capital of Africa; well-known artists include Horicane, Stalwart and Re-
bellion the Recaller.
Penned by Cuban ethnologist Carlos Moore, Fela: This Bitch of a Life: The Authorised Biography of Africa's Musical
Genius (2010, Omnibus Press) is as it says. Based on many hours of conversation with Kuti himself, and
reissued to coincide with FELA: The Musical , which took London and Broadway by storm.
Wassoulou
Wassoulou music is named after the region of the same name, south of Bamako in Mali,
and the Fula people who inhabit it. Wassoulou is not jeli music - they have no castes - but
is based on hunting songs. The women usually sing, and the men dance. The music is
based on the kamalengoni (youth's harp) - a sort of funky, jittery bass guitar invented in
the 1950s - and is augmented by the thwack and slap of the fle, a calabash strung with
cowrie shells and thrown and spun in the air. Prominent artists include Oumou Sangare,
Fatoumata Diawara and Coumbia Sidibe; having shot to fame with her 1989 release,
Moussoulou , Oumou Sangare is still the biggest Wassoulou star, singing in her native
Bambara about injustices of life in West Africa - polygamy, the price of a bride - and is
actively involved in Mali's burgeoning peace movement.
Directed by Cheikhj Sene, better known as the rapper Keyti, 100% Galsen is a 25-minute documentary
about hip-hop in Senegal and a sort of grassroots versionof the multi-award- winning Democracy in Dakar , a
2007 film that presents a model for hip-hop as a force for social change.