Alune Wade has worked with artists from various backgrounds: the USA, France, Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Morocco. His music is a crossover without borders, a bridge between the original and the present via jazz, this music that brings together continents with rhythms inspired by Afrobeat. His 4th album «African Fast Food», the result of a cuisine shared between friends where everyone knew how to bring his history, his identity and his culture. Named Marcus Miller, Alune Wade was at the French Institute on Saturday, April 6.
A dragonfly on stage
Alune Wade picked up the moon on this Dakar scene on Saturday 6 April 2019. It all starts late at night. In the light of this musical scene at the French Institute, the Senegalese jazzman offered what he knows best: music, in front of a room conquered by his musical cause. Enveloped by these voluptuous melodies emanating from his guitar strings, he is generous in his way of communicating with the room, even his headdress does not leave indifferent because with Alune everything is in style. We can read in his deeds and gestures that the artist wanted to give everything, to give everything to this faithful audience. The evening was at its peak. This rhythmic lyrical show between his fingers and the sounds of his guitar. In a tranquil but volcanic force, Alune invites to an endless journey in his galloping melodies of “Sol”, “Fa”, “Ré” and a “Do” who still casually seeks in these airs to marry his musical companions. Alune is the king! On this Dakar scene “he was really the king”!
He walks with the big names of international music
Alune Wade has worked with great singers and musicians of this world to perfect these unique gestures. He stared at Touré Kunda, Deep Forest, Sheikh Tidiane Seck, Salif Keita, Marcus Miller or Harold Lopez Mussa, Oxmo Puccinodes, encounters and musical experiences that have added or adjusted his passion for music and refine the precision of his gestures on the threads of his guitar that is body with him-even on this night stage and which is already vibrating in the far corners of Dakar by night.
A musical family
Bassist, author, composer, performer and producer, Alune Wade actually fell into music when he was a baby. At the age of six, he learned early from his father, a colonel in the Senegalese army, and a former symphonic conductor of Armed Forces music, trained at the Conservatoire de Paris between 1960 and 1970. His dad teaches him music theory, bass, piano and guitar. Then his mother writes his score, the musical tastes of his matrix on the mbalax rhythms and mandingo sonorities all sprinkled by the flows of the French variety rub off on him. From Mother Alune draws her source a second time and defines her musical imprint to make an explosive cocktail.
Exceptional meetings
At 18, Alune Wade plays with Ismaëla Lô, he will stay with this mentor for eight good years. Nicknamed Marcus Miller or “Boy Marcus”, he knows a consecration in 2015: he records with his youth idol, Marcus Miller himself his album “Afrodeezia”. With pianist Harold Lopez, he also released an album “Nussa”. His production is inspired by various musical genres including jazz, rap, afrobeat, folk. Finally, he plays with Youssou Ndour, Fatoumata Diawara, Blick Bassy, Naïssam Jalal…
The albums
After “Mbolo” in 2006, “Ayo Néné” in 2011, “African Fast Food” in 2018 is the artist’s third solo album, “Dakar-Havana-Dakar”. ” African Fast Food means “African Fast Food”; Mbolo means “Union en wolof”. Another of his songs “How Many Miles” in tribute to the American trumpeter Miles Davis. Other titles such as “Mali Dén” are devoted to the problems of insecurity that Mali has been facing since 2014.
