Senegal history & culture

Senegal’s modern culture – as seen in Dakar’s architecture, cinema, music and art – is celebrated across Western Africa and the world. But when travelers come for cultural tours, they’ll also visit its villages, and sense a tension between Senegal’s modern presentation and its vanishing tribal life.

“I remember the first fight I had with my father was when I had moved out to the city,” says Assan Saine, “the first time I had clean water out of the tap was when I was studying in the city. When I came back to my village, I took a water bottle with me.

“My father was furious. He said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said that I didn’t think the water from the village well was clean enough. There was paper, rubbish, sticks in it – you would never drink that water if you saw it.

“I said to my father, ‘I don’t regard it as clean’. He was furious, ‘Who are you to come here to say that!’ he said, ‘This is who you are, this is water that made your grandfather, your father, this is water that made you.’”

Assan is Gambian, and has been a guide in Senegal and Gambia for the past 22 years, taking travelers on Senegal history and culture tours. These usually start in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, but Assan is keen to get visitors to come out to the rural villages. Senegal’s rural communities live in the villages of their tribes, but increasingly, people leave to seek work in the cities. For people like Assan’s father, this change is bittersweet.

“Whatever you see in Dakar is what you see in London, in New York. But driving in these local village you’ll see something that you’ve never seen before,” he says. “The highlight is the villages.” Assan himself grew up in a small village in Gambia, where his family still live.

One thing that visitors do when they visit small rural communities is learn to draw water. Access to clean water is still a big problem in many areas. “There is no water supply in villages,” Assan explains. “They have a well that’s 20-25 metres deep. The local people will use a very long rope to get the water out. We get guests to do the same. You can’t wake up every morning and turn on your tap.”

From these many cultural beginnings emerges Dakar, the capital, a cosmopolitan city recognised as a center of art, architecture, and music.

Dakar has a fashion week. Dak’Art, its biennale art show – like Venice’s – is a city-wide celebration of art. Legendary Senegalese film director Ousmane Sembène regularly has several of his films featured in directors’ lists of the best cinema of all time, whilst modern musicians in the capital follow in the footsteps of globally beloved Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour, who had so much influence that he was also briefly Senegal’s Minister of Tourism.

Whilst the African Renaissance Monument might be Dakar’s most recognisable structure, the city also has fascinating architecture dating from after its independence in the 1960s and 1970s, when a call for the country to forge a new national identity was answered by architects who were more fluently informed by vernacular styles, and created the interesting buildings of the Cheikh Anta Diop University campus.

This ‘high’ art is underpinned by city life that’s like a catwalk and a party rolled into one, where there’s a tailor on every corner, where naming ceremonies are celebrated in the street by the Wolof people with drumming and dance, and where a budding hip hop scene, and a free annual hip hop festival, are continuing the country’s long history of ‘griots’ – professional storytellers.

Senegal’s national sport is wrestling. “It’s very big in Senegal,” says Assan, “Wrestlers in Senegal are more popular than footballers.” The Amadou Barry Stadium in Dakar allows you to watch both – and it is also a music venue.

“You cannot talk about Senegal and Gambia culture and not talk about music,” says Assan. “Each of the tribes has their own musical instrument – the most popular is kora that belongs to the Madinka – then you have the drum, that belongs to the Wolof. The xylophone belongs to the Jola.”

Another unmissable event is dinner. “The food is always a highlight. The first thing we do is try the jolof fries and the fried rice,” – in Dakar, dibiteries serve the capital’s most popular street food, dibi, skewers of grilled meat cooked on metal grids over glowing coals.

Dakar’s cultural scene is Senegalese first but has a great debt to pay to its tribes, from which lots of its inspiration has come. Assan is saddened by the fact that this tribal culture is on the wane.

“I’ve found the changes shocking – if I think about it, it makes me cry as a guide. If I look at most of our culture and tradition, it’s disappearing day by day… Most of the young generation now – they don’t know the name of the musical instrument of their tribe.”

Assan is from the Serer ethnic group, many of whom are fishermen. “Our musical instrument is made out of a big calabash (gourd),” says Assan. Women will don large rings on each of their fingers and use these to strike the calabash. Assan is describing the instrument, and then he stops. “I can’t think of the name of the instrument though,” he says. “Even I am losing my culture.”

Arrive in Dakar, then visit Goree Island, and go from here to the Pink Lake on the way to UNESCO-inscribed city of St Louis. Have a stay in Djoudj National Park, one of the most important bird reserves in the world, and bird watch at Langue de Barbarie National Park, too. Visit Touba, with its beautiful mosque. Crossing into The Gambia you can arrive in Georgetown in time to join a river cruise along the spectacular River Gambia, which arrives eventually at Gambia’s Wassu stone circles. Crossing back to Senegal, you can visit Fadiouth Island on the way back to Dakar.