Youssou Ndour

Last night I saw Youssou Ndour in concert. If you are not familiar with him, I suggest you look him up online. He is very famous in Africa and ESPECIALLY in Senegal since he is Senegalese. He performs all over the world, including in the United States so that is neat. Although he is a musician by profession, he holds quite a bit of political power and he owns one of the six privately owned television stations in all of Senegal. Yes, his presence is highly noticed and scrutinized by the government. He is for the people, thus the people here adore him - and when I say people, I mean people of all ages.
The concert was a unique experience - off and on groups of men or groups of women broke out in traditional dance, forming circles or lines with the same rhythm/movement or creating dances where one person passes the "spotlight" to the next. The people were constantly making new friends and dancing with people they have never met before; that is simply because in this culture everyone is friends with everyone, not just at concerts. I have many friends all over the area I live in and my Senegalese friends are constantly chatting with new people when we go places; the lifestyle here is based on community, thus, life is calculated and judged on communal strength. Back to the concert, it was lovely to turn around and see a group of 3 or 4 men grinning and dancing back and forth with each other as if they were communicating like family. The dancing here is a form of communication; it is connection building. For example, last night I went to the concert with three other Linfield ladies and then two Senegalese men. We met one other young Senegalese man and he joined us in dancing, the boys danced together, he danced with us girls, and then after the concert he came to eat with us, chatting it up and exchanging phone numbers. We danced with others but he stuck with us the most.
The music itself was fantastic. The musicians are very talented and the vocals were excellent - there is definitely a different sound to the vocals, or obviously music in general here. Also, the drumming was incredible. The beats make you feel soooo good and because I did not grow up with the dancing styles here the dances feel unique to me. It is fun to dance the Senegalese style - at the clubs there is a mixture of Senegalese music with the traditional beats and then other hip-hop/rap, a lot of it American of French so it is fun to switch between the dancing styles. The concert was definitely pure Senegalese.
Well, there is a tid-bit on music culture - here are a few pictures and a couple of videos - if the sound on the videos is not good I apologize, but at least you can see what it looked like at the concert. Oh me goodness, I almost forgot! After the concert we went to eat at this neat bar/night cafe place AND I actually ate chicken by choice, chewed it, and loved it. It was the first time I actually enjoyed the meat itself; it was a perfectly white, fresh, flavorful barbecued chicken breast. I doubt this will happen again though, I am very picky with the meat I eat :)

My girlfriend Jenna and me.

Jenna, Ndiaw (my friend Arielle's neighbor and nice guy who helps us get places, shows us around, and has random connections to games, concerts, etc. here in Dakar), Me

JJ, Arielle, Jenna, Me

Youssou Ndour

Video of a an incredible, crazy dancer - I didn't get him dancing much because I was so distracted by it and watched instead of took videos :)