The first root · 2007 – 2009
Sahel
Mali & Niger
Where the seed took for the first time - and where, on the same day, the field geographer and the Baobab Man were born.
It all begins here.
First field posting, first studio nights. By day, I build tools against hunger; by night, I record musicians. This double life - development and creation intertwined - never left me. It began there, in the dust of the Sahel.
What took root here
Day, and night
Development · ACF
Famine early-warning
Project manager for Action Contre la Faim in Mali and Niger. Food-security early-warning tools for pastoral zones, integrated into national systems and adopted by six Sahelian countries - still running eighteen years on.
Sound · Radio
Radio, already
The first hours on air, in Bamako - the music and voices of West Africa. The start of a radio practice that would run for seven years between Bamako and Geneva.
Studio · Production
The first studio
A recording studio rigged up with whatever was at hand, in an NGO bedroom. It is there that I meet Natty Jean, whose music I would produce for years.
The name
Birth of the Baobab Man
One evening in 2007, the Malian musicians filing in to record christen me: the Baobab Man. The name stayed.
The seed moves on
Towards the Caribbean
From the Sahel, the wind carries the seed to Grenada and Barbados - the Red Cross, climate-risk reduction, and a music competition called Spice It Up.