Wasis Diop

Wasis Diop (born 1950 in Dakar, Senegal) is an internationally renowned musician known for blending traditional Senegalese folk music with modern pop and jazz. The son of a Senegalese high official and member of the Lebou tribe, Diop left Senegal in the 1970s to study engineering in Paris, but once there turned to music, joining a fellow Senegalese musician, Umban Ukset, in forming the band West African Cosmos. Diop left the band in 1979 to start a solo career, and over the next decade achieved some small success, particularly in partnerships with singer Marie-France Anglade of Black Heritage [http://www.blackheritage.de] and jazz saxophonist Yasuaki Shimizu, but it wasn't until the early 1990s that his career began to take off with the success of his first album, the soundtrack to the film Hyenes (which had been directed by his brother, Djibril Diop Mambety). "Variety" described his soundtrack to 2006's "Daratt" from Chad as "outstanding". [ [http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117931446.html?categoryid=31&cs=1 "Dry Season"] by Deborah Young, "Variety", September 1, 2006]

More albums followed: "No Sant" in 1995, "Toxu" in 1998, and the compilation album "Everything Is Never Quite Enough" in 2004.

He lives in Paris and writes much of his music in French. Among English-speaking audiences, he's probably best known for African Dream, a single off "No Sant" which narrowly missed the Top 40 list in the UK, and "Everything is Never Quite Enough", which featured on the soundtrack to the 1999 film "The Thomas Crown Affair".

Selected discography

* "Everything Is Never Quite Enough" (2003)
# "Le Passeur"
# "Everything (...Is Never Quite Enough)"
# "Ramatu"
# "Samba le Berger"
# "African Dream"
# "Dem Ba Ma"
# "Digge (Le Gong A Sonne)"
# "Dune"
# "Soweto Daal"
# "Défaal Lu Wor (Once in a Lifetime)"
# "No Sant"
# "Kaay Niu Gospel"
# "Julia"
# "Holaal Bu Baah"
# "Raï M'Bélé"
# "Ballad of the Feather"
# "My Son"
# "Ma Na"
# "Les Gueux"

Notes and references