DRUMBEATS & HEARTSTRINGS

DAKAR THRUMS TO THE NIGHTLY RHYTHMS OF MUSICIANS — A GALAXY OF POLITICALLY ENGAGED PERFORMERS DRAWING ON SENEGAL’S RICH ORAL TRADITIONS AND LEGENDARY REPUTATION FOR JAZZ. MEANWHILE, SOUTH OF THE CAPITAL, AMID THE BEACHES AND BAOBABS OF RURAL CASAMANCE, THE UNMISSABLE ANNUAL CARNIVAL COMES WITH MUSIC LESSONS AND MASQUERADE PARADES

- EMMA GREGG

It’s approaching midnight on a velvety Dakar night, and a superstar-to-be is turning my world upside down.

His name is Elhadj A Tiaré, aka Ashs the Best, and he’s wowing the audience at Théâtre de Verdure with soulful ballads sung in the city’s lingua franca, Wolof. But Elhadj is no conventional crooner — what sets him apart are the turn-on-a-sixpence forays into hip hop, reggae, Latin jazz, and gospel. He switches styles as smoothly as other singers change tempo or key and, somehow, it just works. Suddenly, the idea of single genre music seems totally passé.

Born in 1995, this dazzling Senegalese musician grew up in the Dakar suburb of Pikine and turned professional while still a teenager. Tonight, he exudes confident geek-chic, complete with wire-framed spectacles and the kind of hand-painted tabard-and-trousers ensemble that suggests he hangs out with arty fashionistas.

If you’ve yet to hear a track by Ashs the Best, don’t worry: you soon will. He was a finalist in the 2021 Prix Découvertes Rfi(Radio France Internationale) talent competition for emerging French-speaking African singers and judging by tonight’s ultracool set, he’ll go far. “It was my father who inspired me to become a performer,” he tells me later. “He played in a famous Senegalese reggae band, Niominka Bi, mashing up African and Jamaican sounds. I worshipped him.”