Cheikh Lô – Maame (World Circuit, 2025)
A decade has passed since Cheikh Lô last offered a studio album, and Maame feels like a homecoming with dust on its sandals and prayer on its breath. The sessions took place during and after the 2021 lockdowns, so the songs carry the hush of closed streets and the stubborn glow of neighborly faith.
“Baba Moussa BP 120” opens the set with knotted rhythms and a voice that leans forward as if welcoming guests into the courtyard.
Lô composed and arranged everything, and the authority shows. Because he handles so many parts himself, guitar, drums, timbales, congas, shakers, lead, and backing vocals, the performances feel intimate, even when the music surges.
The range is wide, Afro-acoustic meditations sit beside African salsa and high-energy mbalax, with Afro-blues, reggae, Afropop, classical colors, jazz dialects, and traditional rumba passing through like well-traveled cousins.
Maame rendered by musicians who know exactly where they stand and invite you, gently, insistently, to stand there too.
Musicians: Cheikh Lô on guitars, congas, lead and backing vocals, timbales; Rene Sowatche on bass, guitar; and Thierno Koite on saxophone.
Buy Maame.
Author: Madison Quinn
