Cheikh Ibra Fam grew up moving across Senegal, his father worked as a customs director and the family followed. He started singing at seven in Kourels choirs and sang spiritual songs in the Baye Fall tradition. His uncle Coly Cissé played guitar in the house. Otis Redding came through the speakers. So did the Afro-Cuban rhythms of Orchestra Aragón. Six years singing with Orchestra Baobab sharpened it further. “Baobab awakened the Africa that was sleeping in me,” he has said, naming Balla Sidibé and Issa Sissokho as formative presences in that period.

“Amoul Solo”, Wolof for “Life Is Simple”, is a single from Adouna (Life), Fam’s second solo album, out on Cumbancha on 10 April. The song takes its musical cues from Cape Verdean music, built on a lilting swing with trombone lines by Wilfrid Ambroise Zinsou. Jean Amémoutou Laope plays kayamb, a bamboo shaker central to Réunion Island’s Maloya tradition. Adjah Santana plays guitar, Louis Haessler bass, and Hakim Abdulsamad, who produced the album, handles programming. The video was filmed in Senegal.

The lyrics address fame and wealth as things that pass. Fam frames the song around impermanence, self-knowledge and dignity, and the refrain lands the point in six words: “Life is simple, everything will end.” He has described his writing in similarly direct terms: “It’s not about me. It’s about the messages” of love, tolerance, understanding, justice, and the courage to change one’s situation.

Adouna was recorded between Réunion Island, Senegal, France and Canada, with Abdulsamad producing and arranging, and final mixing handled by Cumbancha founder Jacob Edgar in Vermont and Quebec producer Simon Walls in Montreal. It follows Fam’s 2022 solo debut Peace in Africa and the recognition that brought him as an RFI Talent.

Stream “Amoul Solo” HERE and listen to Adouna in full via THIS LINK