Baobab-Gouye-Gui De Dakar
Mouhamadou Bamba

This album is an assemblage……glimpses of tradition…reflections on our collective present…luminous echoes between love and solitude.hope and absurdity.euphoria and mourning.This album grapples with and transgresses these binaries because we have/and continue to cross borders. Yet, for us, the border is no metaphor—too much real staring back at us.We embody the border.We (our families) have crossed it.We (our stories) are coated with its residues.And so… we cross the border of self through our art—out of necessity.This album was imagined while touring the country as families were corralled in cages.We then fled the wildfire of a nascent pandemic poised to (especially) ravage our communities as we recorded in Los Angeles.And our sonic journey concluded in Chicago while the country rebelled against the murderous consequences of policing in the U.S.Through this cascade of tipping points and tragedy, we summoned melody and verse to sound out verdant technicolor dreams of freedom and desire, mirroring the vortex of our time.And borders were at the center of these struggles.Borders—of nation, of belonging—are the struggle.And so, this album is a set of dispatches from that wondrous journey……our journey across and into a sunburst surreal.…our astral meditations on loss and triumph.…our sonic trek across a landscape of trauma and effervescence.…The border divides and defines places—yes. But it is equally a place unto itself—a borderland.It is the forbidden place where we dwell.The enchanting space where we are at home.The bustling city where we reflect.Look into our mirror. See us in you.