Senegal Music Map｜6 Cities from Dakar to Thies｜Mbalax & Sabar

A 28-minute instrumental journey across Senegal — six cities in one continuous arc, from the sabar-drum mbalax of Dakar to the stripped-down rail-junction mbalax of Thiès. No vocals; pure instrumental storytelling. Each track is composed from the music of its place: the seven-drum sabar ensemble and pitch-bending tama of Dakar, Africa's hip-hop hub and mbalax capital; the languid Latin-jazz and 21-string kora of colonial river-island Saint-Louis, home of the jazz festival; the forest-deep Jola ekonting and bougarabou of Casamance, a world apart from the Wolof north; the devotional oud and ney breath-music of Touba, the Mouride Sufi pilgrimage city; and the tama-led Serer njuup of Kaolack, grounded in the groundnut-basin and the Sine-Saloum delta. Tracklist (Dakar → Thiès): 1. Dakar — seven-drum sabar, chattering tama, electric mbalax of the hip-hop capital [opener] 2. Saint-Louis — colonial Latin-jazz, kora and brass over the Senegal River, Faidherbe twilight 3. Casamance / Ziguinchor — Jola ekonting and bougarabou, forest-dense ritual, banjo-ancestor memory [peak] 4. Touba — Mouride Sufi restraint, oud and ney, dawn over the Great Mosque 5. Kaolack — Serer tama-led njuup, groundnut-basin warmth, Sine-Saloum delta 6. Thiès — stripped working-class mbalax, gritty sabar at the rail junction, slow fade [closer] 🎵 Music: AI-composed via Suno (instrumental only) 📸 Visuals: landscape & aerial photography (Unsplash, Pexels & Wikimedia Commons — free commercial license, full credits below) 🌍 Soundport Project / 聲港計畫 — AI-generated travel music across the world 0:00 Dakar 3:48 Saint-Louis 7:42 Casamance / Ziguinchor 12:44 Touba 20:36 Kaolack 24:28 Thies *Photo credits:* Dakar: photo by Karen Nash on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/photos/a-view-of...) Saint-Louis: photo by Baptiste Riethmann on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/photos/child-pla...) Casamance / Ziguinchor: photo by Sweder Breet on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/photos/two-peopl...) Touba: photo by Eyelit Studio on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/photos/a-large-b...) Kaolack: photo by aliunix on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/photos/sea-dock-...) Thies: photo by Soxna Diarra on Wikimedia (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...)