Baba Commandant and the Mandingo Band are a contemporary world music group from Burkina Faso, with a trademark fusion of Mandingue and afro-beat styles. The Mandingo Band are a hit machine, sculpting seven new tracks of near Beefheart/Magic Band dynamics, Fela inspired groovers dusted out in the Sahel zone, rather than the humidity and sweat of Lagos, creating one of the most original and propulsive musical statements to come from the contemporary West African cultural juggernaut. Their latest album Sonbonbela was released in 2022 on Sublime Frequencies.

As with previous releases, the band features the legendary guitar pyrotechnics of Issouf Diabate, truly one of the greatest West African (or Earth for that matter) guitarists of the last forty years. The band is completed by a near bottomless barrel of artistry from the Ouagadougou and Bobo Dioulasso musical talent pool. On bass guitar, Wendeyida Ouedraogo, on drums Abbas Kabore, and on percussion and balafon, Nickie Dembele. Leading the charge again is the captain himself, Mamadou Sanou on the Doso Ngoni featuring one of the most distinctive voices of the modern era. The opposite of the banal trends of auto-tune that have pervaded most of West African popular music, Baba’s voice still impresses with its gravel and grit, showcasing a range that is ancient and defiant in equal measure.

This performance is co-presented with Felton Music Hall. Thank you to Seven Seas Music for their generous sponsorship of this event.

An activist for traditional Manding music, Baba continues to redefine the boundaries between traditional and modern. In 1981, he joined the Koule Dafourou troupe as a dancer. Later, he developed his current musical direction as a singer, first in Dounia and then in the Afromandingo Band.

Baba Commandant’s current band — when he’s not playing with the now-famous Burkinabé musician Victor Démé — is the Mandingo Band. At present, he is a practitioner of Manding roots music in combination with the Afrobeat style, drawing inspiration from the golden era of Nigerian music. Indeed, Fela Kuti/Africa 70 and King Sunny Adé are big influences, as is the legendary Malian growler Moussa Doumbia.

Baba Commandant plays the ngoni, the instrument of the Donso (the traditional hunters in this region of Burkina Faso and Mali).