Baaba Maal - Singer and Songwriter HARDtalk

That is a summary of the news. That's it from me. Now it is time

for HARDtalk. My my guest is an internationally renowned for this

and a political opinion. His campaigning search is on sensitive

territory, from the Rights of Women to climate change. Africa is now a

jarring mix of economic growth and life-threatening poverty. As the

continent changes, is the music Welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you.

have always made a point of being positive and upbeat about the

future of Africa but in the last few months you have found yourself

a month some of the most poorest people, looking at people on the

edge of hunger and starvation. How easy is it to maintain your

enthusiasm and optimism when you see those things? It is not easy to

maintain that. You have to keep it going. If you really believe in the

fact that Africa has potential to be going into the future in a

strong way. You know you have to be positive and need people like you

to be aware and you need to drawn them, to be calling the people who

make the decision to make it happened. I feel myself concerned

about these people's future because I know they can bring what we need

to shore and the government of some of these people, to campaign, to

say, yes, we can make it. Can you paying for me a picture of what it

was like to be, I think in one community where you were a few

weeks ago, a nomadic people's small settlement that has been terribly

hit by the drought and many hungry people, farmers to cannot scratch a

living. You played music for them. It is not just about the drought.

It is a food crisis. It is the combination people seeing what has

happened to them, like a fatality. It did not rained for two days and

now they are in the same situation. At the same time, the International

Organisation for food is what people can opt to be in touch to

bring back to their families. It is a combination of all of that. It is

people who are well organised. When you go there you see the amount of

people who are already to take the right information and who are well

organised to be able, if somebody comes, or Excel 4, to bring a plan,

to be with them to bring a future project and then they are ready.

They are not just people waiting to be held. It is easy to bring

somebody like me, who is part of the community, who has been there

all the time, they have been listening to my songs since I

started, and they referred to my songs. I was someone who was at the

school, he went away for some time, and used my expenses, to bring

information to them. -- experiences. It seems to me it was your

community. You were brought up on the border with Mauritania, one of

the badly affected areas. When we see people suffering, as they have

been in the past few months, do we get to a point where we say, some

of these people in the nomadic court has, they cannot have a

future? Partly because of climate change as well. They have a future

but they have to do just themselves to the reality of living now.

can they do that? I was saying to some of these people, the nomadic

people, into my songs, when I perform, for two days sometimes, in

the night, but if the day I sit down with them, I go to visit with

their families. We sit down and talk about families and education

and politics. And you tell them they have to change? Yes. I say,

for it supple, they have to understand climate change they have

to organise their pastoral life in a more organised way, to see how

people are doing it in the West. If you take something, they could be

spoons, and you could doubt it to your new life and make it happened

-- a good experience. I cannot understand why we are having these

rivers where you have all of the people giving opportunity for what,

agricultural system. Irrigation? Already we have a strong amount of

young people ready to work. They do not want to leave to go to France

or central Africa but sometimes they are so desperate because the

plan is not there. You have worked as an ambassador with the UN on a

number of different development programmes. You make appeals to the

international community when things will really bad, saying get out

your wallets and send assistance. I wonder but a part of you is

beginning to believe those forms of assistance of really with us in a

way and are not changing anything? -- pointless. Sometimes I have been

criticised by my people when I start to talk about how to go away

from the caste system, which many people are not free under, so

people can be free and can have a good education system. At the end

of the day the culture comes back to you are right. I know it is

difficult to take people from their traditions and their way of

thinking and to bring them into a new way of working. I am travelling

all over the world and looking at it freeway and learning things. I

come back and this concert I am doing is to share with them this

kind of its fears. -- this kind of experience. I want too, in a way,

get you to step back and reflect on your own upbringing and how you

broke into music, which has gone international. In Senegal there is

a tradition where there is a cost of people who are the storytellers

and the Music makers. You were not part of that it you broke into that.

How did you do it? In it has always been a struggle for me to do what I

am doing right now. There is a way of projecting herself into what you

want to do. My father was not expecting me to do that. He did not

want you to be a musician? No. He had to accept it because heI was

doing well at school but he did not know that music was what I wanted

to do. He gave me advice, just to not be a musician to entertain

people, but I had to promise them to use my music to participate in a

way to educate my people from my community. You were in a sense a

rabble? I am. I am always a rebel. -- a rabble. We are rebels because

we do not see borders or frontiers between people. We travel over,

since centuries or thousands of years, from east to west in Africa.

We learned a lot of things. We cannot say we are the link between

ethnic groups in Africa. The music I have learned from my grandparents,

from my community, bought me that if I had to be this kind of

musician I have to travel to see other people. I find what you say

it is fascinating. You have inherited the nomadic culture of

your people which is about farming, racing and you are a nomad but you

are a musical nomad and you have spent years and used in this

nomadic existence. I would like to see a clip that is any use of,

playing a London concert. Give us a I want to just look at that and

think about you now. It is a very traditional form of music. You are

singing in your own language but you have reached millions of people

in the world. Have you had to compromise will start to make it

accessible? I am not going to call it compromise. I would just say it

is a natural way to be going wrong my childhood, my cultural

background, and the fact I went to school. I thank my father for that,

to satisfy my curiosity. I travelled all over the world. When

you travel, you learn things, you hear things and you see things that

you like, and you appreciate things. For it supple, I came to London and

I discovered Celtic music and I discovered similarities in the

Middle East and the expression and I saw things close to how people in

my community -- the melodies. I went into this kind of

collaboration that brought elements into my music. You have obviously

sunk in your own language but you have also sung in French. -- son.

As that made a difference to your international appeal? It is

important for African musicians, sometimes, to sing in different

languages. We have something strong that comes from our instruments,

from the structure of on music, that people want to be discovered.

It is different for any type of music but we need to express

ourselves in different languages and that is good because people

want to know about our messages. Let's talk more about the messages.

In the introduction I mentioned a couple of very famous abaca and

some writers, singers, who have dabbled in politics -- musicians.

You will also making a political stance. -- you are also. Is it easy

as a creative artist to cross that We have always been political in

Africa. When you are a musician, you get famous. The role of the

griot's is very strong in history. These were the people not afraid to

come and the leaders. Even now in modern days, to the President, to

say, "This is the aspiration of your community, country and people".

But as doing that -- but by doing that as this in the first and

foremost, when I look at others who achieved so much and have become,

for example, the Minister of Tourism, at some point, does your

credibility as a musician suffer with your audience if you are so

sucked into the political process? It can suffer sometimes. Some

people follow you because of your musical talent for what you

represent in the music and they don't want to lose that. But also,

if you get the ability to play the music and use the power of your

voice to point your finger on the important issues, sometimes it is

more comfortable to stay in the musical scene and because you have

much more power than politicians. What are you going to do? You have

strong political opinions, you are tempted to move directly into party

politics? I don't know yet. Maybe one day. That is a politician's

answer. I will never rule it out. That is not my decision yet. But I

will use my voice strongly to say the truth of what I feel is the

truth of what can help people to move forward. Let me quote you

something that the rapper Didier Awadi said. He said the last great

is nobody else like that of the scene today. Do you agree with

that? That there is a lack of visionary and strong political

leadership in Africa? I know Didier Awadi very well. I know what he

means by saying that. In Africa, especially the young generation,

are looking for symbols and looking for role-models. To reflect what

they believe deeply and what they suffered to make it happen. And

when you look at the Continent, Nelson Mandela is far away on the

front line from all the other African political leaders. People

should sometimes refer to him because it is about making people

move forward but also teaching us to stand up in this time we live in

now. It is teaching, I guess, but also confronting people with a

difficult decision sometimes. Confronting your own people with

difficult decisions. Nelson Mandela with that in his agreeing to go

into a process with the clerk and working with white politicians. I

just wonder whether you are prepared for some of the

difficulties that I can see for you if you continue with your message

about the modernisation and change in said that -- in Senegal and

African society, particularly for some of the gender issues, women's

rights, which you have pushed hard for. And it runs against many

traditions in Senegalese culture. am not afraid of that. You have to

believe in what you are talking about. If you are a musician and an

artist, you have to believe in the messages you are delivering to

people. But it can get very personal. What about polygamy?

give answers in many interviews about how my mother suffered with

polygamy. And how difficult it was for many women in my society who

were faced with that, not understanding what it would bring

to their children. You talk very personally about it because, to

remind people, your own mother had seven children by your father and

your father then took another wife and had nine children with the

second wife. You say, and you have written about it, how hard it was

for your mother and for you and your siblings. And for the wife,

the other wife, also. Is your message that cenacle can no longer

tolerate that kind of lifestyle? Differs. -- that cenacle can no

longer. Every country has its own specificity to go into life. But a

musician and artist is just trying to fix it, to make it better for

people, and help people to understand that we need to move

together in the future and we have to achieve things that can help our

next generation to be more Secure and more connected to the time we

live in. It is fascinating. I am very aware that, for example, Fela

Kuti was very political but his conclusion on some of these

traditional issues was absolutely diametrically opposite to yours.

Fela Kuti constantly defended what he called African cultural

tradition against Western imperialism. He was a staunch

defender of polygamy because he said, we should not fall into this

trap of just copying the West. There is a proverb in my language

that says, there is some truth that are just connected to some moment

in life. Some troops are just universal. You cannot take it away.

-- troops. But in my village. God there is some proof that according

to the reality of the time. -- some of truth. Maybe polygamy was like

that. It was something everybody was doing, not because you wanted

to go with several wives in your house, but this was the way where

you need to have many children who can work in the fields, for example.

But now that times are changing. Times are changing and people are

changing. Let's bring it back to the music business. You are keen to

promote new African musicians but I wonder how easy it is to get new

fee now African musicians to the forefront of the music culture

across Africa? It still seems to be dominated by men. It is coming now.

I feel very comfortable about that. When I see somebody like Angelique

Kidjo, she is doing very well. There are some artists like Asher,

and others, who are very well connected with their time because

they play instruments and speak in very modern languages, like English

and French. They know exactly what they are doing. The background is

the traditional African music and heritage. But they are still

connected to Allenby, hip-hop music. I see it like the future of African

music which is very good. -- connected to R&B. But is the danger

that African music will get swamped by influences from North America,

Europe, you mention of the music and teapot. If you look at African

MTV and some of the African music awards, they are dominated by the

style of urban music which is perhaps more out of Detroit that

out of Dhaka. -- hip-hop. That is right. People putting on these

kinds of showers should be aware that we have something to prove in

Africa. Could it be lost? Yes. Now we have ferris exports. Anybody

playing music is organising themselves and taking care of the

potentiality with internet and all of this. -- the area's exports.

This is the responsibility first from our governments to organise it.

For example, people should be thinking about how to organise

people to know exactly what you are bringing out and what we have to

wait from people coming. You cannot stop the fact that we have to be

making some deals with the outside world. Final thought on that. There

was a big fuss in 2005 in the Light Aid concert because African

musicians were not at the forefront of that event. -- Live Aid concert.

You were angry about that. Is the stars will be some of the world's

biggest musical stars, on the level of a J C mac or Rihanna? Will we

see African stars at that level of pop culture? -- Jay-Z. I am sure it

will happen. The new generation of musicians are not just finding a

way to make a name. They are Africa

Africa. They are well aware about the potentiality that they have in

between their hands and how they can make the world move with their

movement themselves. And they are ready to use it. I have a nephew in