Cheikh Lô

Born in Bobo‑Dioulasso in Burkina Faso to Senegalese parents, Cheikh Lô developed an early practice of singing and percussion before joining in 1976 the Orchestre Volta Jazz, a popular band that at the time played Cuban, Congolese and Burkinabé repertoires. Settling in Senegal in the late 1970s, Cheikh Lô passed through several mbalax groups and then broadened his musical language to include soukous, makossa and reggae. From the mid‑1980s he worked between West Africa and Paris as a guitarist and studio musician; during this period he refined a personal songwriting style marked by Senegalese rhythms, Afro‑Caribbean exchanges and a supple, immediately recognizable voice. Youssou N’Dour produced his first album, Ne La Thiass, released in 1995, followed by Bambay Gueej (1999), Lamp Fall (2005), Jamm (2010), Balbalou (2015) and Maame (2025). Cheikh Lô also appears alongside Rubén González on Chanchullo (2000) and took part in the 2002 Red Hot and Riot project with, among others, Les Nubians and Manu Dibango. A member of the Baye Fall current within Mouridism, Cheikh Lô also embeds a spiritual dimension in his music that runs through his career without altering the balance between Senegalese tradition and popular African and Caribbean forms.