Singer and lyricist Thione Seck, one of the lords of Senegalese music for forty years, died Sunday at the age of 66 in Dakar, according to his lawyer, Ousmane Seye. From a family of griots, Thione Ballago Seck with his full name, was one of the most famous musicians in the country with Youssou Ndour, Omar Pène, Ismaël Lô or even his own son, Wally Seck, reports the Parisian.
“He died this Sunday morning from an illness at the Fann Hospital Center” in Dakar, said Me Seye, confirming information from the Senegalese press.
Former singer in the 1970s of the Baobab Orchestra, a training follower of an Afro-Cuban salsa with Senegalese sauce, Thione Seck had founded in the 1980s “Raam Daam”, a group of pure Mbalax, a genre born from the meeting between several local rhythms, Singing, Funk, and sometimes Reggae. His discography includes in particular “Allô Petit”, “Orientissime” and “Diaga”.
According to several Senegalese media, Thione Seck was buried yesterday Sunday afternoon in the Muslim cemetery in Yoff, a district of the capital.
It should be noted that the last years of the Senegalese musician were tarnished by a long legal saga in a case of counterfeit banknotes, which earned him a 9-month pretrial detention in 2015. At the beginning of March, the Supreme Court of Senegal had annulled the entire procedure against him, said his lawyer, Ousmane Seye, on Sunday, AFP said.
Tributes followed one another in Senegal and across the web as soon as the disappearance was announced. On Twitter, the former mayor of Dakar Khalifa Sall welcomed the departure of a “real monument to Senegalese music”
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