Baaba Maal

Baaba Maal is a Senegalese singer, guitarist and composer, born at Podor on the banks of the Senegal River; the sources divide on his birth date — the Arabic Wikipedia article and Wikidata give 12 November 1953, the English and French articles 13 June 1953 — and the record follows the Arabic article and Wikidata while stating the conflict. ^{1 2 3 4} He sings primarily in Pulaar and promotes the traditions of the Pulaar-speaking people on both sides of the Senegal River in the ancient kingdom of Futa Tooro, and he is the Senegalese musician best known internationally after Youssou N'Dour. ^{1 3}

He was expected to follow in his father's footsteps and become a fisherman — the French article names his father, Baidy Mall, a veteran who became a muezzin, and his mother, a housewife and singer from whom he inherited music — but, under the influence of his lifelong friend and family gawlo, the blind guitarist Mansour Seck, he devoted himself to learning music from his mother and his school's headmaster. ^{1 3 4} The French article adds that he learned the Qur'an in a daara before entering the French school, spent his childhood at Ndioum herding cattle, and went to primary school at Podor and then the lycée Charles de Gaulle. ⁴

He studied music at the university in Dakar before leaving to study musical notation in Paris, where he took courses at the Conservatoire de Paris and had private tuition. ^{3 1} After returning to Senegal he studied traditional music with Seck and began performing with the band Daande Lenol ("voice of the culture"), which the French article says the two founded at Dakar in 1985, adding keyboards and electric guitar to traditional sounds and Pulaar singing. ^{3 4}

With Seck he released Djam Leelii (1989) and Baayo (1991), then Lam Toro (1992). World success came in 1994 with Firin' in Fouta, which used ragga, salsa and Breton harp to create a popular sound that launched the careers of the rap group Positive Black Soul and led to the formation of Afro Celt Sound System; in 1996 he opened for Santana at Wembley Stadium. Nomad Soul (1998) featured Brian Eno as one of seven producers. ^{3 4}

His studio albums include Wango (1987); Djam Leelii (1989); Baayo (1991); Lam Toro (1992); Firin' in Fouta (1994); Nomad Soul (1998); Missing You (Mi Yeewnii) (2001), recorded near Dakar in a return to traditional sounds; Television (2009); The Traveller (2016), his eleventh studio album, with the singles "Fulani Rock" and "Gilli Men" and the song "There Will Be Time" with Mumford & Sons; and Being (2023). ^{3 4}

He recorded for the Red Hot Organization's charity compilations devoted to HIV/AIDS awareness in 1998 and 2002, performed at the Live Earth concert in Johannesburg on 7 July 2007, and contributed to the soundtracks of Black Hawk Down and the video game Far Cry 2. ³ His voice is heard on Ludwig Göransson's scores for Black Panther (2018) — on the tracks "Wakanda" and "A King's Sunset" — and for its sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022), in which he also appears briefly as a funeral singer. ³ He was honoured by the Dutch-based Prince Claus Fund in 1998 and received the Prix des Arts from President Macky Sall in 2017. ^{3 4}

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

Humanitarian and environmental work. Early in his career he advocated disease prevention and poverty relief in Africa through his songs, and in July 2003 he was made a UNDP Youth Emissary. ^{1 3} On 28 March 2016 he launched Nann-K, a charity for global sustainable development and agricultural careers in Senegal and other African countries. In December 2019 he promised to fight desertification in the Sahel by planting trees, hoping every person in Senegal could say they had planted one; in April 2023 he was named a Goodwill Ambassador of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, after serving as its Land Ambassador. ³

What the sources do not say. No consulted source states a religion or a school for Baaba Maal himself. What the French article records of his upbringing — Qur'an learning in a daara as a child, a father who became a muezzin, a namesake ancestor described as a disciple of Maodo Malick Sy — is family background and childhood schooling, not an attestation of his own school, and his faith is accordingly recorded as unknown. ^{4 2}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
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