Sufism arrived in Senegal only relatively recently, in the mid-nineteenth century. While there there are no recordings of the traditional music of its Muridiyya brotherhood, they are never the less represented by West African popular music, notably from award winning singer Cheikh LO. Nigel Williamson talked to LO about his branch of Sufism Cheikh LS Photo Dunin

The spread of Islam to black Africa has had a particularly strong impact in Senegal through the influence of the Sufi saint Cheikh Amadou Bamba.

Known also as Khadim Rasul ("friend and servant of God's messenger"), Bamba was born in 1855 and spent much of his life in conflict with the French colonial authorities, being exiled twice before his death in 1927. Claiming to be a spiritual heir of the great eleventh-century Persian mystic Al-Ghazali, Bamba established West Africa's leading centre of Muslim scholarship at Touba, and founded a Sufi brotherhood known as the Muridiyya, who today number several million followers in West Africa with outposts among the Senegalese - diaspora in the US and Canada.

There are few, if any, commercially available , recordings of the authentic ritual music of the

Muridiyya, which consists entirely of chanting and an accompaniment of large drums known . as xin. Yet Senegalese Sufism has reached a wide audience arming world music devotees through the work of two artists, Cheikh Lei and Musa Dieng Kala. Both are steeped in Sufi lore and the teachings of Bamba but work essentially in the popular field, combining elements of devotional music with contemporary rhythms and other modern influences. Thal they are able to adapt Sufi elements to western instruments in a popular context without causing offence is indicative of the more relaxed nature of west African Islamic practice, where ancient spiritual concerns appear to sit more happily alongside the trappings of modern western culture than almost anywhere in the Arabic world.

"The spirituality is part of me, it is in everything I do and it infuses the music," says Cheikh LC), who invariably opens his concert performances with an extended bout of Sufi chanting and drumming. Although now in his forties, at the end of 1997 LO was voted best newcomer of the year at the Kora Awards, effectively the Grammys of African music, for his Senegalese-recorded debut album "Ne la thiass" ("Gone in a flash"). Le) is a member of the Baye Fall, a sect within the Muridiyya, which follows the teachings of Bamba's close colleague, Cheikh 'bra Fall. Long dreadlocks and colourful patchwork robes, worn as a symbol against vanity and waste, give Le) and his Baye Fall brethren a dramatic appearance but there is no doubting the intensity of their spirituality. The nine tracks on LO's album include his own tributes to Bamba and Ibra Fall and two songs about Maam Samba, LO's own marabout, or spiritual guide, and allegedly the last surviving contemporary of the original Muridiyya founders.

During a brief' stay in London at the beginning of this year. LO explained the relationship between his faith and his music. "My father was a silversmith but he came from a family of marabouts. I was brought up in the Sufi faith, which tells you to work hard as if you're never going to die and to pray to God as if you are I going to die tomorrow. It is a very modest and unmaterialistic lifestyle." LO visits his marabout in his village in Senegal twice a week Musa Dieng Kala Photo ShanachielLaird for spiritual guidance. "We don't know Maam Samba's exact age, but he is definitely more than 100. He is very strong and he walks without a stick. He has many wives and children. When you arrive some people give money, some cola nuts. We say grace and have a communal meal. He sits on the floor and speaks in a very loud voice. He's a man of trust and he tells you exactly what he thinks."

The Muridiyya place great emphasis on their blackness. "Arabic Islam doesn't believe there can be a black saint but we have one. Mecca isn't important to us. Why bother with all that travelling when we have a black saint here'?" Instead of Mecca the place of pilgrimage is Touba, where the tombs of both Bamba and Ibra Fall are located. "It is where Bamba found the tree of paradise on earth; Touba is the centre of our beliefs. It is open to non-Sufis. Anybody can go and there you will see the Muridiyya walking around in a circle chanting the zikr with the drummers in the middle. It is very loud and they will go on all night until five in the morning." LO plans to use more of the chants of the zikr on his second album, which he will record later this year. "It is only by combining the spiritual elements with the popular elements that you can take the message to a wider audience," he believes.

Another Senegali Sufi, Musa Dieng Kala has adopted a similar approach, with less success, on his album "Shakawtu — Faith". LO's style is undeniably popular but at least retains a distinctively African flavour. Kala strays further afield. His voice is moving and expressive, particularly in the a cappella prayer of the title track, and his words are taken solely from the khassayas (religious poems) of Amadou Bamba, who wrote in the local Wolof language. Yet elsewhere the ambient, New Age arrangements are unsatisfyingly westernized. This also makes a mockery of Kala's plea in the booklet-notes that we should "refrain from listening to this music in bars or night-clubs" and keep the recording to "places suitable for communication with the most high". Such a message to an accompaniment of synthesizers is profoundly unconvincing a