{"id":10585,"date":"2017-03-23T04:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T04:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2017\/03\/23\/first-listen-orchestra-baobab-tribute-to-ndiouga-dieng\/"},"modified":"2017-03-23T04:00:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T04:00:15","slug":"first-listen-orchestra-baobab-tribute-to-ndiouga-dieng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/first-listen-orchestra-baobab-tribute-to-ndiouga-dieng\/","title":{"rendered":"First Listen: Orchestra Baobab, 'Tribute to Ndiouga Dieng'"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Anastasia Tsioulcas<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n Orchestra Baobab’s new album, Tribute to Ndiouga Dieng<\/em>, comes out March 31.<\/p>\n

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Youri Lenquette\/Courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

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Youri Lenquette\/Courtesy of the artist<\/p>\n

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One of West Africa’s most charming bands is back \u2014 again. Almost a decade after the group’s last album and nearly 50 years since its founding, Senegal’s Orchestra Baobab is swaggering back onto international dance floors with its silk, sultry songs, layering Afro-Cuban sounds with local traditions and pop styles from across Senegal and elsewhere in West Africa.<\/p>\n

First, a little back story. Orchestra Baobab was founded in 1970 as the house band for a venue in Dakar called Club Baobab, an elegant nightclub owned by the country’s minister of finance<\/a> (who was also the younger brother of Senegal’s president at the time). Club Baobab soon became one of the city’s main see-and-be-seen spots for politicians, businessmen and the city’s elite \u2013 and it needed its own band to keep its patrons dancing. Culling some of its members from the competing nightclub act Star Band, Orchestra Baobab played at its new home five nights a week, five hours at a time, with one half-hour break<\/a> each evening. With that kind of schedule comes a finesse and tightness that can’t be replicated.<\/p>\n