DRUMBEATS & HEARTSTRINGS
It’s approaching midnight on a velvety Dakar night, and a superstar-to-be is turning my world upside down.
His name is Elhadj A Tiaré, aka Ashs the Best, and he’s wowing the audience at Théâtre de Verdure with soulful ballads sung in the city’s lingua franca, Wolof. But Elhadj is no conventional crooner — what sets him apart are the turn-on-a-sixpence forays into hip hop, reggae, Latin jazz and gospel. He switches styles as smoothly as other singers change tempo or key and, somehow, it just works. Suddenly, the idea of single-genre music seems totally passé.
Born in 1995, this dazzling Senegalese musician grew up in the Dakar suburb of Pikine and turned professional while still a teenager. Tonight, he exudes confident geek-chic, complete with wire-framed spectacles and the kind of hand-painted tabard-and-trousers ensemble that suggests he hangs out with arty fashionistas.
If you’ve yet to hear a track by Ashs the Best, don’t worry: you soon will. He was a finalist in the 2021 Prix Découvertes RFI (Radio France Internationale) talent competition for emerging French-speaking African singers, and judging by tonight’s ultracool set, he’ll go far. “It was my father who inspired me to become a performer,” he tells me later. “He played in a famous Senegalese reggae band, Niominka Bi, mashing up African and Jamaican sounds. I worshipped him.”
I’ve come to Senegal in search of great music and stimulating culture, and to be honest, I didn’t expect to get as lucky as this. It’s been years since my last visit, and I’ve heard that live gigs can be tricky to pin down these days. And yet
