Orchestra Baobab

Line up:

Ndeye Korka Dieng – vocals
Zaccharia Koité – vocals
Seydou Norou Koité – alto saxophone 
Wilfrid Zinsou – trombone
Yahya Fall – rhythm guitar
René Sowatche – lead / rhythm guitar
Malick Sy – bass
Moussa Sissokho – congas
Mamadou Mountaga Koité – drums 

Orchestra Baobab – Made in Senegal

Few bands keep going for more than fifty years. Even fewer carry on after several of their original members have passed away. Orchestra Baobab have done both. The Senegalese orchestra began as the house band at an exclusive nightclub in Dakar and are one of the most important names in African popular music.

On 18 March, they turn Cosmopolite into a dance floor.

Picture Dakar in the early 1970s. Senegal is a young, independent nation, nightclubs are flourishing, and sounds from across the world drift into the city from the harbour. At the exclusive Baobab Club, where guests are expected to dress smartly and the interior is inspired by the baobab tree, musicians from different parts of West Africa come together. They bring their own traditions, but also a love of Cuban music, Congolese rumba and jazz. Together, they create something unlike anything else. Orchestra Baobab is born.

Four times we have invited them to Torshov in the depths of winter, and four times they have set the room alight. Last time, it was sold out. It is difficult to explain what happens. You have to experience it.

Orchestra Baobab became an institution in Senegalese music before the band split up in 1987. Then, in the early 2000s, the unthinkable happened: international rediscovery brought the musicians back together. They returned to the stage, released new music and found an audience far beyond their homeland. But keeping a band alive for more than half a century takes more than reviving old hits.

“We have the spirit of conquerors,” says musical director and original member Seydou Morou “Thierno” Koité, who plays alto saxophone. “Our new, younger members fight to preserve the original sound. The older musicians are always looking to explore new paths.”

Much of the band’s distinctive character lies in that paradox. The younger members guard the sound; the veterans want to challenge it. Their heritage is not a recipe to be followed to the letter, but a language that can be used to say something new. Today’s line-up is a network of family ties and musical kinship, with sons, nephews and long-standing collaborators carrying the tradition forward.

You can hear it on Made in Senegal, the orchestra’s first studio album since 2017, recorded entirely in their homeland. New compositions sit alongside fresh interpretations of classics. It is precisely this openness that has allowed the band to survive changing trends, new generations and the loss of musicians who helped shape their sound from the beginning.

And it is extraordinary to see new audiences discovering the music on their own terms, including here in Norway. “Our energy makes the music feel young, and people tell us our old songs sound as though they were written today,” says Koité.

Orchestra Baobab do not play to remember who they were, but to discover who they might become. Their music carries half a century of stories, love songs and rhythmic connections across borders, yet still stands firm, perhaps precisely because it is so open and willing to change.

“We are like the tree we are named after,” says Koité. “Whatever happens, the baobab stands firm.”

When Orchestra Baobab take the stage at Cosmopolite, they bring with them the history of Dakar’s nightclubs and that unique sound that emerges when musicians listen to one another and old songs find new life in new hands.

Orchestra Baobab perform at Cosmopolite on 18 March 2027.