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The World’s Marco Werman introduces us to one of Senegal’s most under-recognized musicians, singer Omar Pene. Video: See Omar Pene & Super Diamono perform live Download MP3
Omar Pene & Super Diamono live on Senegalese television in 2008.
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LISA MULLINS: From Kentucky we head now to Senegal. Senegal’s best know musician, Youssou N’dour, thinks highly of the subject of our Global Hit today. The subject’s name is Omar Pene and N’dour calls him a living legend. Pretty high praise from a singer who’s become a superstar while Omar Pene has never quite made it into the same international spotlight. Although back home in Senegal, Omar Pene is just as significant an artist. The World’s Marco Werman has more.
MARCO WERMAN: Omar Pene was born in Senegal in 1956. The band he started with, the Super Diamono was the toast of Dakar. Today, Omar Pene and the band still play to their original fans and their fan’s children.
SPEAKING FRENCH
WERMAN: Today, when I perform before a young audience, says Omar Pene, I know they began listening to Super Diamono when they were children. Their fathers or their brothers introduced them to it. They grew up with my music, says Pene, and now it’s passed from generation to generation. Omar Pene’s best known musical counterpart in Senegal is Youssou N’dour. To a non-Senegalese ear, N’dour and Pene may have similar voices. But the two men’s music couldn’t be more different. N’dour was one of the innovators of a sound called “m’balax.” It’s high energy dance music. And though Omar Pene can get people shaking, his style “afro-feeling” is consistently mellow. This song from Pene’s latest recording is called Sounou Xaleyi. It translates from Wolof as “our children.” Omar Pene created a lyric about the youth of Senegal who are leaving for Europe. Against a slow but fairly upbeat melody, Pene sings, “the lives that drowned in the depths of the ocean, for a life in the west that’s only an illusion, return home from these boats of misfortune, and grow the mother country.”
SPEAKING FRENCH
WERMAN: Pene says that his pan-African activism pushes him to raise issues in his music. It’s true, he says, that we live different lives across Africa, and we have different values. But we’re lagging behind in what it takes for people to live better. Yes, he says, we’re living in the 21st century, but we are still fighting poverty, and we’ve got to move beyond that. So for me, repeats Omar Pene, it’s personal activism. I’m interested in the news, and I want Africans to think about the problems that face us, and to find solutions to them.
SPEAKING FRENCH
WERMAN: Omar Pene says because he is not as recognizable outside Senegal as Youssou N’dour or Baaba Maal, it made it difficult to put out his most recent album Ndam internationally. It took him ten years. But once out, people in Europe he says were wondering, “where has this guy been?” That’s flattering, but he says his music is for the Senegalese first.
SPEAKING FRENCH
WERMAN: I live in Dakar, he says. I am Senegalese. And I know what I represent to Senegal, especially to young people. You can’t take me out of Senegal, he says. I think in a way, these Senegalese kids want to hear what I have to say. If that message happens to get transmitted internationally, continues Omar Pene, well that’s good too. And that’s important, he says, because then more people hear what those messages are. Omar Pene has the voice and songwriting skills. But he also possesses a rare thing among African artists these days. The will to stay in Africa and actually do the work he advocates for in his music. For The World, I’m Marco Werman.
MULLINS: If you really want to see Omar Pene the way the Senegalese see him, then come to TheWorld.org. We’ve got a video of Omar Pene performing with Super Diamono on Senegalese TV. From the Nan and Bill Harris Studios at WGBH in Boston, I’m Lisa Mullins. Thanks for listening.
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