‘Jamm’ is the first new album in five years from one of Africa’s great musical mavericks, Senegalese sufi troubadour Cheikh Lo. This is his most distinctive and personal album since his groundbreaking, Youssou N’Dour-produced debut ‘Ne la Thiass’ in 1996.
‘Jamm’ means ‘peace’ in Wolof, the main language spoken in Senegal. Everybody needs peace in order to live a better life and to achieve serenity. Even if you have all the gold in the world but don’t have peace, you won’t have a life. But some people say they want peace and then they go and kill other people. Peace is also necessary in the home, between a man and his wife, in the office between workers, everywhere. It must inhabit the person. If it lived in everyone, something which would require a huge effort today, then we wouldn’t be fighting all these wars.
The song has plenty of different colours and different sources. Musically, I adopted a bit of a Songhai approach from the north of Mali in this song. The vocal, guitar and bass were from the original demo I recorded at my bass player Thierno Sarr’s small studio in Dakar. We took these demos and added percussion and trombones in a Dakar studio and Pee Wee added his sax in London. Spontaneity is what’s behind the strength of this album and all this was done very spontaneously.
Cheikh Lo
“Jamm” (mp3)
from “Jamm”
(World Circuit)
Buy at Amazon MP3
More On This Album
