page_title: Mbalax
section_title: Music and instrumentation
hierarchical_section_title: Mbalax / Music and instrumentation
caption_attribution_description: Tama drum player performing with Youssou N'dour in Warszawa, Poland during the 5th Cross Culture Festival
context_page_description: Mbalax is the national popular dance music of Senegal and the Gambia. Mbalax has its sacred origins in the Serer people's ultra-religious, ultra-conservative njuup music tradition—and their sacred ndut rite ceremonies. By the 1970s, it became a fusion with other popular music from the African diaspora, the West, and afropop such as jazz, soul, Latin, Congolese rumba, and rock blended with sabar, the traditional drumming and dance music of the Wolof of Senegal. The genre's name derived from accompanying rhythms used in sabar called mbalax.
context_section_description: Senegalese songs are usually unwritten, and certain instruments or musical styles are reserved for specific genders or age groups. In the past, only griots could perform music. Their traditional role was transmitting oral history, genealogies and social rankings, diplomacy, and storytelling. Today, griots continue to participate in naming ceremonies, weddings, and funerals.
  Music is performed using instruments such as drums, balafon, riti, Tama (talking drum), sabar drum.  In the 1970s Western instruments and equipment such as the flute, electric guitar, piano, violin, trumpet and synthesizer have been incorporated into the music, to accompany the dance.  In addition to the instrumentation, humming, chanting and singing (in either Wolof, French or English) are used to accompany the music that the dance is done to.  The lyrics of mbalax songs address social, religious, familial, or moral issues.
  According to author Patricia Tang:
  "The rhythmic foundation and primary identifiable feature of modern mbalax is the sabar...in Wolof gewel percussionist parlance, mbalax literally means 'accompaniment'. Within a sabar ensemble, different drums play different roles, and mbalax refers to the accompaniment parts played by the mbeng-mbeng. However, the mbalax part varies rhythmically from one dance to another.
caption: A talking-drum player with Youssou N'Dour
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