Tajabone

Tajabone is the name of a Senegalese folk celebration held by young people during Tamxarit, the local name for the Islamic holiday of Ashura. At nightfall, boys and girls in costume go through the streets singing and dancing around the houses to ask for small gifts. The custom is said to have grown out of a habit of Qur'anic school pupils, who once went to their aunts and relatives with their bowls to ask for alms. Ismaël Lô's song carries the festival's name. Lô was born in 1956 in Dogondoutchi, Niger, to a Senegalese father and a Nigerien mother, and grew up in Rufisque near Dakar. He studied at the art school in Dakar in the 1970s, played with the popular group Super Diamono and left in 1984 to go solo, recording five popular albums in four years. He plays guitar and harmonica and has been called the Bob Dylan of Africa. In 1990 he signed with the French label Barclay and recorded his seventh solo album in France. Thanks to "Tajabone", the record became a hit in the European charts and launched his international career. Nearly a decade later the song found a second audience when Pedro Almodóvar used it in his 1999 film All About My Mother, alongside music by Dino Saluzzi. Lô was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2002, and he has kept returning to the song, recording it again on his 2006 album Sénégal. A children's street festival became one of Senegal's best-loved melodies.