Balla Sidibé, Orchestra Baobab Singer, Dead at 78

Balla Sidibé, who co-founded Orchestra Baobab in 1970, has died in Dakar at the age of 78, the group’s label World Circuit confirms. He died in his sleep after a short illness, Al-Jazeera reports, citing local media. Sidibé was a lead singer, percussionist, and composer with the beloved Senegalese group, and was rehearsing as recently as this week. “Balla was a giant of African music and a great and gentle man,” World Circuit wrote on Instagram.

Born in 1942, Sidibé abandoned a career with the police force to make music in the cultural hub of Casamance in Senegal. Assembled from a group of local musicians, Orchestra Baobab formed in 1970 as the house band for Dakar’s Baobab Club and spent the decade honing a West African dance music that variously incorporated Afro-Latin styles, pop, and West African griot music, among other styles. They appeared on national TV in their native Senegal and toured West Africa, recording some 20 albums and hundreds of songs—including 1980’s Mouhamadou Bamba—before splitting in the 1980s.

In 1989, the label World Circuit reissued one of the group’s final sessions, the LP Pirate’s Choice, leading to a wave of promotion that prompted the group to reform in 2001. To celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, the group announced the reissue of their reunion album Specialist in All Styles.

“Sidibé was the doyen of the Orchestra,” bandmate Thierno Kouyate told AFP. “Frankly, we have lost two monumental musicians without compare since he was a singer and a timpani drummer—bringing the two roles together.”