186: Boomerang, by Daara J

Daara J (Senegal)
Boomerang (2003)
13 tracks, 56 minutes
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I can't quite remember how I first came across Daara J. I have a vague memory of buying their album in an HMV, possibly on spec from having heard their name somewhere, but I also know I saw them on my 13th birthday at WOMAD as part of a strange 30-minutes-each double bill on the main stage with The Drummers of Burundi. I'm not sure which came first, but the end result was me listening to Boomerang and loving it.

I was thrilled to work out that this was hip-hop, and that I actually 'got' it. Hip-hop was always something other people liked that I never really understood, but this one hit me in the right places, even if I couldn't understand any of the Wolof and only a tiny fraction of the French. And – because that's how these things go – it opened my ears up to a whole world of hip-hop that I'm still loving and learning to this day.

It's not just hip-hop on offer on Boomerang, but those are the most successful bits of the album. The rest is more musically inclined towards pop and R'n'B that sounded dated enough when it came out, let alone now. Basically, you want to stick to the first five tracks of this one for the cream of the album, which goes noticeably downhill after that. But those five tracks are excellent. The highlight is the title track and opener. It's a rumination on the idea that hip-hop 'boomeranged' from Africa to America and now back. The raps in Wolof are at a blistering pace but every syllable is clear; the rhythms are exciting and the hooks from the then-young Malian singer Rokia Traore (who also appears on the track 'Le Cycle') are really beautiful.

Where Daara J are at their best – as they are on this album – is when they are uncompromising in their Senegalese identity. Their music may be born from hip-hop and doused in anything from soul to reggae to salsa, but there's also inescapable influences from mbalax, the sabar and tama drumming from the Wolof people and any number of other audibly Senegalese styles.

Of course, by the time I tried to impress the cooler kids at school with the fact I'd finally got into hip-hop (albeit in a slightly unusual way), they'd moved onto something else and hip-hop was deemed uncool now, and so remained I. But the joke's on them. I got to dig this great album that included African hip-hop at its best, and build a whole new taste in music from that point. They didn't. So nerr.