“When the band first started, we became very well known for having a particular style,” guitarist Barthélemy Attisso explains. Speaking through a translator from his home in Lomé, Togo, Attisso is a founding member who also serves as the band’s arranger. “We were known for having that style throughout the 1970s, up until the 1980s. Then there was 15 years of silence, when we weren’t playing. When we got together again, the way that people knew us was by our sound—our sound was our identity. The feedback that we got was that what we had done was really good, so we continue to try to reproduce that style. It was almost like it was our duty—our responsibility—for the benefi t of the people who wanted us to continue.”

Today all but two of the core members of Orchestra Baobab are holdovers from the original band. Formed in 1970, most of the musicians had put in time with the Star Band, a top Senegalese outfi t whose ranks also included, for a while, countryman Youssou N’Dour. Taking their name from Dakar’s Baobab Club, where they performed regularly, the players in the group were adamant from the start that their sound would expand beyond traditional West African styles to incorporate musical elements from other corners of the world, notably Cuba—Latin music had long been popular in Senegal—as well as Portugal, the U.S. and elsewhere. Part of the reason they did so was because audiences expected it of them.

“The owner of the Baobab Club was interested in all different kinds of music,” Attisso says, “and because he had the money, he was able to get copies of these discs and bring them in. We would listen during our rest breaks to all of this other music, and then make it our own. It got to the point where the people in the club didn’t want to hear the discs anymore. They wanted to hear us playing all the different styles. So in effect, we actually came to replace the club’s discotheque. Then as time went on, people would challenge us and say, ‘We heard this song. Can you play it like this?’ We had a lot of ambition and a lot of nerve and we were willing to do it.”

Gold then located the former members and convinced them to re-form and record a new album. “He had the vision that we could still do something, and I said yes right away, without any hesitation,” Attisso recalls. Specialist In All Styles was produced by Gold and Baobab fan N’Dour, and ushered in a new era for the group, which has since toured the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

“I’ve always said that it’s important for an artist to have two things,” says Attisso, who had been studying law when Baobab first took off, and put his degree to good use during the breakup years. “One, you have to have real talent. The other thing you have to have is luck. In the ’70s and ’80s we had the talent, but perhaps we didn’t have the luck. Now we’ve passed the frontiers of Africa. We’re not just an African orchestra. I’m just hoping that this is something that’s going to last for us.”

Made In Dakar virtually ensures that it will. Featuring both reworked songs from the band’s back catalog and newly penned material, with several players augmenting the basic lineup, it’s a magnificent array of everything that is special about these specialists. “Beni Baraale,” sung by cofounder Balla Sidibe, is a tribute to Guinea’s Bembeya Jazz (another iconic African band), while “Colette,” co-written by Attisso, co-founding vocalist Rudy Gomis and another veteran Baobab singer, Ndoiouga Dieng, is Attisso’s paean to his wife. The song blurs the lines between reggae, classic jazz and American R&B, and is dedicated by Attisso to Carlos Santana.