Bleep

Brian Shimkovitz releases Aby Ngana Diop’s seminal album Liital on his Awesome Tapes From Africa imprint. Liital marks an important chapter in his mission of exposing African music to a Western audience: Aby Ngana Diop was the most famous female practitioner of Senegalese poetic storytelling in the 1980s and 1990s. The style is called taasu, rapped aggressively in Wolof and mainly performed by women griots over frantic drum patterns. Diop’s only album is considered groundbreaking because it was the first commercial release to combine Senegalese pop with the traditional style.