Catch Senegal's Cheikh Lô @ Great Hall tonight

Cheikh Lô is one of the great mavericks of African music. A superb singer and songwriter as well as a distinctive guitarist, percussionist and drummer he has distilled a variety of influences from West and Central Africa, to create a sound all his own.

Lô dedicates both his life and music to Baye Fall, a specifically Senegalese form of Islam and part of the larger Islamic brotherhood of Mouridism. Established by Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba M’Becke at the end of the 19th century, Mouridism emerged from opposition to French colonialism and many stories are told of Bamba’s struggles with the authorities who feared that the rapid spread of Mouridism would inspire armed insurrection. Bamba’s closest disciple Cheikh Ibra Fall (also known as Lamp Fall)
established the Baye Fall movement, and he was the first to wear the patchwork clothes and long dreadlocks that are still Baye Fall trademarks today. Cheikh Lô’s own marabout, Maame Massamba N’Diaye is said to be over 100 years old, and was a disciple of Cheikh Ibra Fall; Cheikh Lô wears his picture in a pendant around his neck.

Cheikh Lô was born in 1955, to Senegalese parents in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, not far from the border with Mali, where he grew up speaking Bambara (language of Mali), Wolof (language of Senegal) and French. His father was from a long line of marabouts. From an early age Lô was only interested in music, running away from school to teach himself guitar and percussion on borrowed instruments. During his teens he listened to all kinds of music, especially the Congolese rumba which was popular throughout Africa. Cuban music was also all the rage in West Africa at this time, so when his older brothers started up their 78s and danced to ‘El Pancho Bravo’, Cheikh, without understanding a word, would mime exactly to the Spanish lyrics.

At 21 he started singing and playing percussion with Orchestra Volta Jazz in Bobo Dioulasso. The band played a variety of music from Burkina Faso and its neighbouring countries as well Cuban and other styles. In 1981 he moved to Dakar, Senegal where he played drums for the renowned and progressive singer, Ouza, before joining the house band at the Hotel Savana, drumming and singing an international repertoire.Three years later he was in Paris working day and night as an on-call session drummer. It was "studio... sleep... studio for two years," as Cheikh recalls. "I love Congolese and Cameroonian music and I absorbed a lot of it during this period.” Upon his return to Senegal, he found that his now very long dreadlocks made him no longer welcome at the Hotel Savana so he concentrated on his own music.

Cheikh’s first release Doxandeme (aka Immigrants), on which he sang about being Senegalese abroad, came out in 1990. Despite his reservations about the quality of the local production, it sold well and earned him the Nouveau Talent award in Dakar. Youssou N’Dour remembers first encountering Lô as a session singer in 1989. “Whenever he sang the choruses I was overwhelmed by his voice,” explains N’Dour “but I really got to know him from his Doxandeme cassette. I found something in his voice that’s like a voyage through Burkina, Niger, Mali.”