Senegal is home to an extraordinary line-up of African greats. In fact, the world music sections of record stores creak under the weight of Senegalese music - from Orchestre Boabab and Toure Kunda to the real superstars, such as Ali Farka Toure and Youssou n'Dour. Also in the top rank is Baaba Maal, whose music first reached Europe at the end of the 1980s.
From the northern region of Fouta Toro, his was a new sound, not only to many Western ears, but also to the music fans of Dakar for whom N'Dour ruled supreme. Singing in the Fula, rather than Wolof language, Maal was immediately outside the establishment and a powerful representative of a minority culture.
"Fouta Toro is on the border of the Senegalese River between Senegal and Mauritania. We're not far away from the desert - it's a semi-desert region - and there's a lot of nomadic people who live there.
"Also there is fishing and agriculture but they all speak the same language, which is the Fula language. This part of Senegal was a part of the Mandinka kingdom and they use more melodic instruments. "The other part of Senegal has more rhythmic instruments but Fouta is more melodic. When I arrived in Dakar, they knew the music a little, but in a very traditional way - perhaps from some people coming from the griot families [tribal tellers of legends]. They might have heard it maybe at a Fulani ceremony but it was just occasionally that such things happened. You'd have the dancing, the choreography and the costume which is very well done, but is very traditional - just like we do it in the village in Fouta. But they would never hear on the radio or the TV." The music was very different - closer perhaps to that of Mali and Guinea - and Maal was an immediate alternative for the younger music fan, challenging the dominance of Wolof and Youssou N'Dour with music that was certainly more fluid and, in Dakar terms, a little more exotic.
Maal, so proud of his northern roots, quickly became a spokesman for his home and, as his musical power grew, so too did his status as a political and intellectual voice. Not being born into a griot family however (unlike N'Dour - whose mother, Ndeye Sokhna, was a famous griot), he had taken another route - studying at the Dakar conservatoire and then later in Paris.
Impressive credentials certainly, but what about the griot factor even so?
"I think we are doing the same thing. The griots were historians, the people who were keeping the history to let people know where they were coming from. The relationship between the families and kingdoms and the organisation of the society passed through their songs, and this is how everyone knows his role in society - what he should do and what his responsibilities are. "The griot still plays this role but it's not the same because they don't have any more kingdoms. But the music is playing the same role. It's the most effective way of communication. It is close to people. They understand the language, they understand the music and you can use that to send the message of today - or of hope for the future. And also, of course, the history." Maal is a deeply serious man. He his absolutely certain of his role as a musician, and sees it as his job to pass messages, to give information and to speak out against injustices. And so, while he knows he can never be a griot like his close colleague, Mansour Seck, he firmly believes he has an equally definite function to fulfil.
"It's more than just being an entertainer. The culture in Africa has played a big role in the past and it was not just to sing and make people dance and have an ambience. It has to be to have a role - a role of leader - where people will listen to your ideas, your opinion about everything happening in the society."
MAAL'S latest album, Mi Yeewnii, is an acoustic album. Recorded mostly in Senegal, it's very different to the celebrated Firin' Fouta of 1994 - a blockbusting dance record of funky grooves which brought him a whole new Western audience. This time, it's largely a gentler affair where the kora, the belafon and the guitar do their beautiful, hypnotic thing. Although it's produced by John Leckie (of Radiohead fame), this is very definitely a much more traditional album. To drag it into the Irish debating house, the music on Mi Yeewnii is rather more "pure".
"I think people just follow all my albums - especially the young people because they can always hear the African elements. But this time I wanted to do something more relaxed - just for me because I wanted to come back to talk to my guitar and let my voice talk to my guitar, and talk to the traditional musicians I'm working with. But at the same time also, the message I want to deliver suited this kind of music. I was talking personally to Africans, to African leaders and talking about the problems of Africa now, in the new millennium. And so it's also like the voice of Africa talking to the rest of the world with just African music underneath."
Given the size of Senegal, the size of Africa, and the size of the planet, "world music" has always been an unsatisfactory, although useful, term. It serves as a way of promoting and marketing music which is external to our normal field of hearing. In other words, anything which comes from places other than America and England. It's certainly an outrageous simplification to lump the rest of the planet into one category, but it is perhaps the most manageable way of introducing the treasures of other musics into our very limited orbit. And among those many genuine treasures is Baaba Maal of Fouta Toro, the progressive voice of Fula, the entertainer, the intellectual and the man they call "The Nightingale".
"I think it's good to have music coming from all over the world. It's like a child who travels. You know your roots and where you come from, but when you travel you get a lot of experiences. It's like Cuban music. I feel Cuban music is like a child who travelled from Africa, went around the world, got a lot of experiences and came back to Africa and then African bands - who never left Africa - play Cuban music. "Blues music is just like that. I can tell you that when I was a child I was listening to blues, rhythm and blues, funk and jazz. At the same time, I was in the middle of African music and I was very surprised to see a lot of similarities - in the melody, in the way of doing it, even in the sound of the voices. For me, it was the same people from the same place. It's very helpful for people to discover something new - new melodies and fresh things. "I think people are looking for originality when they go to buy music - not just things where they know how it's going to be because they know the artist. There are two different things. There is music coming from a market and there is music coming from a human."
Baaba Maal plays HQ, Dublin, next Saturday