I spent the weekend enjoying Felwine Sarr’s latest offering. Neither in the novel, nor in the essay even less in the poetic ballads between the African imaginary. Felwine Sarr has released an album entitled Naïssan, casting off once again the moorings of a musical career launched in Orleans as part of the group Dolé. The « mixed raced roots reggae » band had released two albums before calling it quits after nearly a decade.

I have often seen Felwine Sarr in concert, in Dakar, notably in the gorgeous cellar of the Djoloff Hotel or in Saint-Louis. I still remember seeing him perform with the group Daaray Samadhi in 2019, at the restaurant La Kora on the island of Saint-Louis. In this small courtyard, as nice as it is charming, the confined space creates a communion between the audience and the artists under the baobab tree that adorns the place.

In this place, one of my favorites in the city, Felwine Sarr and Mabousso Thiam distilled notes of afro-folk accompanied by the delicate voice of Gnilane. These three were more than a family but a « brotherhood of souls in search », a community of creators of love links that formed one with the cloud of lovers that populated the audience that night. How not to think, while writing these lines, of Mabousso Thiam who traveled to the other side? How can we not remember this marvelous, brilliant, and endearing man of whom Felwine Sarr tells us that he had « a solar soul ». Naïssan is an itinerary during which, if you know the musician at all, you can see his obsessions, his impulses and his fetish places forged in the ink of poetry, politics, history, and spirituality. We come across things and destinies, flavors and men and women suggested – in connection of course with the decency of Felwine Sarr and his anchoring in the words of the soul more than those of the mouth that denature, weaken, and devitalize what is of the senses and the intimate.

While listening to the album, I met ghosts and heroes from here and elsewhere; people to whom the poet pays homage with the conciseness required in the salute to the dead.

Felwine Sarr takes us to visit the graves of martyrs and men whose blood has been spilled, making everyday life less inhabitable, but conferring boldness and rage for the future on the heirs. In the title Maskhadov, the artist grabs the autocrats by the collar and asks them if they sleep at night after their sinister crimes. He reminds us of the recent tragedies of Vukovar, Beslan, Rwanda … He returns us to the memories of the Chechen leader, Aslan Maskhadov, Nelson Mandela, or the Lion of Panshir.
Felwine Sarr’s voice takes us on a tour of physical places: Kigali, Dakar, Durham, Pondicherry, Niodior, Orleans; emotional places: wars, travels, hope, pleasure, art, spirituality. The intimate texts recall the figure of the writer and the poet whose literary power overflows in this album. He puts to music the imaginary, the intimate, the exile, the love, the beauty, the overcoming of the sensitive time to sacralize only the infinity. With this album, Felwine Sarr leaves a new trace in his abundant, erudite, mixed, and eclectic work. The guitar constantly accompanies the words of the story to forge a demanding and delightful melody.

With Daaray Samadhi, Felwine Sarr’s work takes a new course towards the Awakening, the supreme space where everything disappears to leave only a version of self stripped of vanities. I have read all of Felwine Sarr’s books and over the years he has become a precious friend for whom I have esteem and admiration. And it is with emotion and joy that I discover his new project which is part of a long term work whose purpose is to create in a spiritual way in order to leave traces of the redemption of his own, but also of all those who will have the imprudence to come to seek in the middle of the sea salts, of the dews of the thousand hills and of the arteries of the bolongs, answers to the questions which agitate the heart of the men. The artist sings in French, English, Wolof and Sereer (my Pulaar relatives will say that he is the only one to make the latter language poetic). These languages say something about the house of humanities that Felwine Sarr has just created to think about reparation and awakening in common beyond barriers and sad passions. The album Naïssan is an aesthetic of links and imaginaries, one more attempt in the language of the economist-philosopher-novelist-musician.

Felwine Sarr thus sows new seeds for possible, probable, and plausible repairs of souls by crossing borders in order to coexist in the world together. He leaves traces and invites us, incites us to tattoo this world with our perennial traces.

By Hamidou ANNE / hamidou.anne@lequotidien.sn