BMG 44

On a Saturday, I met up with Fatim to pay a visit to the rest of Wa BMG 44 in Pikine. Fatim is a firey young woman and a new addition to Wa BMG, which stands for Wa Bokk Menmen Gestu ("Join Forces for Better Thinking"). The 44 is for 1944, when the Senegalese tirailleurs who fought for the French were repatriated. Deciphering their name just confirms BMG's unapolegetically political stance. BMG 44 are known for abrasive raps that keep them from being heard much on the radio or the government-run entertainment channel RTS2. Despite this, they've been around for many years in various incarnations, and have a couple awards and several European tours under their belts.

We arrived by taxi in the banlieu neighborhood of Pikine, where Fatim's fellow BMG member Matador has recently been installed as the director of a hip-hop cultural center he's calling Africulturban. This is kind of an odd state of affairs for Matador the MC, but it's also a lucky break for the group and the hip-hop community at large.

The center is a huge, official building — which used to house the mayor's offices. It's now covered with tags that climb up the walls like vines. The office itself furnished with a few desks and chairs, as well as file cabinets with such labels as "graffiti", "hip hop crews," and "breakdancers." A group of young men and women sit around, looking far from busy. Matador introduces each one as a "secretary" of Africacultururban, prompting Fatim to mutter under her breath, "there sure are a lot secretaries here."

Matador is a short, wiry guy, full of energy and intensity, outfitted only in camo pants and a wife-beater on this sweltering afternoon. His new job seems to be a bit of a balancing act. He's determined to use this cultural center for the good of his community, organizing concerts, developing ties with other scenes worldwide, and drawing people together to reorganize the terminally inefficient production and distribution systems that are the bane of all Senegalese rappers. But he's clearly balancing these bureaucratic better intentions with the restless energy of a man more accustomed to ripping mics than shuffling papers.

Waa BMG 44 also appeared on the 2000 Politichiens compilation, which earned them harrasment and even death threats at the time. Matador is busy tempting fate again this election season. Though he's probably the first rapper to be given a quais-official post (this is not as strange as it sounds — Senegal still operates with a lot of remnants of the French model, where everyone with any power seems to work for the government in some way or another), he's intent on subverting the newfound legitimacy as quickly as possible. His current plan is to put on a massive, political-minded hip-hop festival — Electorap — with over 40 groups, and then put out another compilation like Politichiens before the election in February. He's trying to get the government to fund it without telling them exactly how rabble-rousing it will be.

We drank attaya outside while Fatim and Matador veered from heated argument to heated argument: on immigration, politics — everything except BMG 44. Matador kept turning to me and saying, "OK, now we can start the interview." "This is the interview," I almost told him. Later, we talked about the highs and lows of their time in the scene. Halfway through, Thiouf showed up with a backpack full of copies of his new album. Thiouf is the surprisingly humble MC who won last year's Hip Hop Feeling contest — it's a sort of rap version of American Idol. The prize was enough cash to make an album, and a year later it's finally coming out. You can see posters for it all over Dakar. After we rapped it up with Matador and Fatim, Thiouf and I tried to grab a cab over to Guediawaye, to see Fou Malade. Before we could find one, a bunch of kids in a passing car recognize him in the street and give us a ride.

Fatim, Thiouf, and the other performers I've met in the hip hop game are stars are in Senegal — appearing in magazines and on TV — yet they're usually as broke as everyone else. Fatim hadn't been to the group's Pikine studio for two weeks because she couldn't afford the trip.

Matador explained: you can make about $100 for a show. That's about as much as a monthly salary here for a father supporting a bunch of kids. But the catch is that — like all work here — it's sporadic. An MC would be lucky to get a gig once a month, and anything they make is likely to be eaten up by production costs. The other problem is cassettes. Clunky, hoopty tapes are still the main format on which music — from mbalax to rap — is sold here. A new CD costs an outrageous $10-15, and even a burned bootleg one from a shop is still $4. So the humble cassette, at a about $2 a pop, is still the medium of choice. Remember how they cooked when you left them on the dashboard? Try weeks on end of that kind of weather. Besides the preservation problems, the main difficulty with tapes is that nobody buys tape players any more. And yet all most people can afford to buy is a cassette, so they slap down their 1000CFA, and borrow their friend's brother's friend's tape deck.

Despite this handicap, here's some digital bits of BMG for yall interwebbers.

A freestyle with a couple other crews from a few years ago:

Wa Bmg 44, Bideew Bou Bess, Boul N'Bai, Kantiolis - Da Hop (Freestyle)

A track off their first album:

Wa Bmg 44 - Bxl-Dkr

Check the video for "Jox Ma Sa 5" (Give me 5) off 2004's 44 4 Life.


Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Double BONUS:
Here's a clip of BMG live in Amsterdam:



You can watch the rest of this concert here.