I met Seydina in Madrid, in the neighborhood of Lavapiés. He introduced me to the Senegalese Baye Fall: music of resistance, of plural rhythms and devotional grammar. The different pieces can last around an hour, a kind of somatic medicine played on the sabar.
The Baye Fall is born from a duality: Cheikh Amadou Bamba, the spirit, and Cheikh Ibraima Fall, the body. Two silhouettes that decorate walls and doors across Senegal, white and black, meditation and labor. Fall did the housework, the fields, everything, so that Bamba could pray without interruption.
From there comes the baay fall path: physical work as prayer, service as a way toward the sacred. A theology of movement.
I had heard the chants and drums resonating through the streets of Lavapiés, which for anyone from the neighborhood is fairly common. But I had heard those rhythms before, in 2022, in the musical documents of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv. This trip brought them back to me.
The Baye Fall is born from a duality: Cheikh Amadou Bamba, the spirit, and Cheikh Ibraima Fall, the body. Two silhouettes that decorate walls and doors across Senegal, white and black, meditation and labor. Fall did the housework, the fields, everything, so that Bamba could pray without interruption.
From there comes the baay fall path: physical work as prayer, service as a way toward the sacred. A theology of movement.
I had heard the chants and drums resonating through the streets of Lavapiés, which for anyone from the neighborhood is fairly common. But I had heard those rhythms before, in 2022, in the musical documents of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv. This trip brought them back to me.
I approached and introduced myself to Seydina. He, along with the others, gave me space to film their walk through the neighborhood. The organization Baye Fall Touba Madrid has been taking to the streets to sing and play for fifteen years.
Every Sunday they move through Lavapiés and the Market, all the way to Puerta del Ángel.
I'm still struck by how rhythm travels, how it precedes us and keeps us rooted in territories, in a deep time that covers with its foam the immediate, the right now, the "commodity time." For me, rhythm time leads me back to the sea that raised me, and that keeps pulling me toward new musical worlds.
This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.
Watch Film Here
Madrid 2026
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Every Sunday they move through Lavapiés and the Market, all the way to Puerta del Ángel.
I'm still struck by how rhythm travels, how it precedes us and keeps us rooted in territories, in a deep time that covers with its foam the immediate, the right now, the "commodity time." For me, rhythm time leads me back to the sea that raised me, and that keeps pulling me toward new musical worlds.
This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.
Watch Film Here
Madrid 2026
Co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union, implemented by the Goethe-Institut.
With the support of Nadie Nunca Nada No, Madrid.
Notes on Madrid and Rhythm