Grammy award-winning Senegalese music icon, Youssou Ndour has paid a heartfelt tribute to Gambia's music legend, Badou Jobe.
Youssou was performing on Saturday in London as part of the events of the annual Gambian Cultural Week. Midway through the concert at the prestigious Indigo O2, organisers Yaram Arts, under the leadership of Njok Malick Jeng, presented Badou a certificate of recognition.
Badou was a founding member of the 70s, 80s boybands; Ifangbondi and Super Eagles. After the presentation, Youssou Ndour, who usually gets lots of praise everywhere he goes was this time on role reverse heaping praises on the Gambian music legend.
He said as a kid growing up the likes of Badou was his inspiration. He recalled: “Back then in Senegal, we do not have the music materials, it was Gambia that had it. I used to come to Gambia to watch and learn from his likes. Musically, I am who I am today thanks to Badou Jobe.”
You (one of his sobriquets) went further to say the former singer is a clean hearted man who checks on him and attend his shows each time he is in Europe.
This event was inarguably the best Yaram Arts ever did on Cultural Week. What remained a mystery is how they were able to pull this off given the fact that Youssou is very protective of the brand Youssou. His management carefully chooses which event to perform; they turned down many show requests due to various reasons.
Also, Youssou is in demand at this time of the year across Europe as European event organisers queue to get him signed up to their shows. In fact, he will be performing five shows in six days across Europe, that’s an average of a show every 28 hours.
So, Njok share your secret how you managed and squeezed your event in such a tight schedule!
Gambians in Sweden
Gambians in Sweden though were in an envious mood. They said Londoners pirated the Cultural Week from them, but are far ahead of them now. The issue in Sweden is that there is a big division among the organisers and rumour has it that they now have two competing organising camps.