Senegal’s Carlou D

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Anchor Marco Werman tells us about one rapper from Senegal, Carlou D who has made the successful transition from rapping to singing. Download MP3

Music heard during this Global Hit
Song 1.
ARTIST: Positive Black Soul
ALBUM: Salaam
TRACK:
Boul Fale

Songs 2, 3, 4.
ARTIST: Carlou D
ALBUM: Muzikr
TRACKS:
Nanioul
Yaay Fall
Meun Nako Def

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Read the Transcript
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MARCO WERMAN: Musical cynics look at hip-hop and wonder whether those artists who chant and rap can actually sing. But there are rappers who can also sing. There are even rappers out there who want to break out of the routine of what often amounts to spoken word poetry with a backbeat. Go to Senegal and you’ll find one. This is now-defunct Senegalese rap innovators Positive Black Soul, or PBS. PBS broke out in the mid-‘90s as a new voice of political determination for youth in Senegal. But the two members of the band went their separate ways in 2004. Bandmate Didier Awadi is now a solo rapper. And the other half of PBS, Ibrahim Loucard, better known as Carlou D, is singing. After PBS broke up, Carlou D decided to get his vocal chops in order. He joined a new musical production in the capital of neighboring Mali. Bamako is the home of the Sahel Opera Project, which got off the ground a couple of years ago with funding from the Dutch Government. The opera is an original epic tale. It recounts how desperate Africans take down an imaginary wall in the dry and barren Sahel region that separates them from Europe. Before Carlou D could become part of the Sahel Opera Project though, he had to unlearn the techniques of rap and essentially learn how to sing.

SPEAKING FRENCH

WERMAN: Carlou D told me that it was his vocal coach, the great Senegalese singer Wasis Diop, who helped him a lot. He says that thanks to his training with Diop, he was able to find his singing voice. I was even able, says Carlou D, to discover I had a baritone, something I had ignored before when I was rapping. Carlou D says the trick now is to get his Senegalese audience to go along for this new musical ride he’s taking, in the same way they did when he was in Positive Black Soul.

SPEAKING FRENCH

WERMAN: It’s not that the Senegalese people are uneducated about other music he says. They want to know about it, they want to have it. But remember, he says, the influence of American hip-hop was huge for a lot of young Senegalese musicians and wannabe rappers when it first hit Senegal in the early ‘90s. That really impressed us. But now it’s time to move on, he says, by going in reverse a bit and gaining a wider perspective on music. As I often say, continues Carlou D, mix what’s good from the outside with what we’ve got inside Senegal. Carlou D takes us out today. We’ve got a music video for one of the singles off his debut album, Muzikr. That and a lot of cool stuff are all at TheWorld.org.

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