Orchestra Baobab

While the elegant Dakota isn’t
quite as sublime as the outdoor quad in front of Northrop Auditorium—where
Baobab played under sunny skies and swirling dancers in a beautiful
evening on their last tour—this amazing 11-piece band does have another
superb record’s worth of tunes in their arsenal: Made In Dakar,
released in May, and equal or better than their comeback triumph,
Specialist In All Styles. Barthelemy Attisso’s multifaceted guitar
lines are the main attraction, but it is hard to discount the vibrant,
beseeching griot vocals, the Afro-Latin polyrhythms (especially the
verbose vocabulary of the talking drums) and the snazzy saxophone phrases.
And like all great bands, the synergy is abundant.