mbalax

Mbalax (or mbalakh) is the urban dance music of Senegal, Mauritania and the Gambia. The musical style is rooted in instrumental and vocal styles accompanied by polyrhythmic sabar drumming of the Wolof, a social identity that includes both the original Wolof people of the Greater Senegambia region and the urban panethnic identity that arose during colonialism. In the 1970s, mbalax arose as Senegalese fused indigenous music styles with urban dance music from the African diaspora, the West, and the continent. These foreign sounds included U.S. soul, jazz, and salsa. Afro Cuban musics from the diaspora, Congolese rumba, and rock were also fused with the rhythms of sabar that were now played on the electric bass, guitar and keyboards.¶

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Mbalax”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.¶

mbalax is West African musical style, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition.¹¶

The source record links this tradition to 13 external registers, which can be verified through the citation.¹¶