Sahad, The New King of Afrobeat

A gentle introduction. A guitar, a voice. That’s how Sahad welcomed us to his very first concert at Club Balattou last Thursday. He is joined by Joon Ho Wantete on piano, Christian Obam, the bassist everyone’s raving about at the moment, Raphaël Ojo, with his contagious smile, on drums and backing vocals, and Frédéric Bourgeault on trumpet.

Mixing Wolof, French and English, he took us from blues to afrobeat, funk and reggae, sometimes with no transition between tracks. At times, we thought we were at a Fela Kuti concert, so perfect was his mastery of this style of Nigerian music. He repeatedly addressed the crowd with the question: “Are you alive tonight?”, before moving on to another track.

The complicity with his musicians was palpable, particularly with Joon Ho, who seems to have worked with the artist for a long time. “Some of the musicians I used to play with in Senegal are now based in Montreal,” he told me during our interview a few days earlier (Sahad, Taxi-Brousse in Song – PAN M 360), while others had flown in from London and Abidjan for the occasion.

In addition to playing guitar, he incorporated percussion into his show, sometimes engaging in percussive dialogues with his drummer or interacting with the trumpet, which heightened the musical intensity in the room.

The audience also had an important role to play in following Sahad’s instructions, particularly on the track Ayeye. While the first part of the show was performed in front of a seated audience, the second part was quite different. The artist invited the audience to move closer to the stage, and that was all it took for them to start dancing. The song Kadio Blues was a particular crowd-pleaser, with its breathtaking trumpet and keyboard solos.

To top it all off, Malian diva and griot Djely Tapa blessed the stage with her powerful, haunting voice, while Sahad’s compatriot Seydina charmed us with his unique vocals.

My favorite song was the tribute to Dakar, which took me back to my memories of the city I’d just visited a few weeks earlier. “The next song, we’re going to Senegal. It’s important to sing a song from home,” he announced by way of introduction, with a passage he had the crowd repeat: Dakar ndiaye nekhna, which means Dakar, the wonderful capital. Sahad showcases his musicians, giving them the space they need for their respective solos, sometimes playing the role of conductor. One thing’s for sure: Montreal’s Senegalese community missed quite a show last Thursday. Let’s hope that word-of-mouth will do its job so that on his next visit to our metropolis, the Balattou will be packed to the rafters with his compatriots, who have everything to discover in this multi-talented artist.

Photo credit: Peter Graham