The Wexner Center is hosting an evening of acoustic Africa tonight with performances from Senegalese star Baaba Maal and Ethiopian musician Gigi.
“I brought (Maal) here in the early nineties with his electric set, and when I heard he was planning a U.S. tour this year, I jumped at the chance to bring him back in an acoustic setting,” said Charles Helm, director of performing arts at the Wexner Center.
Helm chose to hold the performance in Weigel Hall rather than Mershon Auditorium and expects the 700 seats to sell out quickly.
“Because it is an acoustic show, I wanted to put it in a more intimate setting,” Helm said.
Maal’s said his goal has been to join African and Western music and spiritual ideas.
His latest album, “Missing You…Mi Yeewnii,” was recorded on location in the village of Nbunk, just outside the Senegal capital of Dakar. The album features native African instruments and includes natural outdoor sounds, like crickets chirping and frogs croaking.
“When I was a boy, learning songs in my village, I didn’t have to write them down. We come from an oral culture, so I trusted that once I had a song, it would stay in my head forever. When people come to the city, they forget the richness of the culture that surrounded them,” Maal said in Pulse magazine.
After winning an art scholarship to study in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, Maal joined Asly Fouta, a group of 70 musicians. Maal later teamed up with longtime friend and musical partner Mansour Seck in traveling to villages across West Africa and learning about the village history and the traditional instruments from the village elders, according to a statement.
Maal said that he was influenced by black American singers of the 1960s such as James Brown, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett as well as Jamaican musicians such as Toots Hibbert, Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff.
“African pop music is very influenced by American soul and R & B music. It’s interesting to see the parallels and connections between them,” Helm said.
Rising Afropop star Gigi will be joining Maal with her own acoustic set. Gigi, born in Ethiopia, has released her self-titled American debut album this year. Her music has been described as “a blend of contemporary jazz, pan-African rhythms and Western pop,” by Glamour magazine.
Gigi faced roadblocks of her own in her journey to becoming an entertainer.
“My father is a businessman, and is very hostile to the fact that I am a singer,” Gigi told Pulse magazine. “I had to run away from home to follow my vocation. He believes that it is shameful to perform in public. Even if I became a big star, he wouldn’t change his mind.”
