Dakar to Bamako: Ausecuma Beats share their stories
Hailing from Australia, Senegal, Cuba and Mali, the Naarm/Melbourne-based 9-piece ensemble, Ausecuma Beats, are an amalgamation of culture and sound. Unified under one shared vision, the 9-piece group meet in a contemporary city to share their stories. Crafting vibrant, polyrhythmic soundscapes that consistently have bodies moving, Ausecuma Beats have been creating unforgettable live performances across the country. Including nine members from four countries, Ausecuma Beats amplifies the unifying power of music across borders.
Their third album, Dakar Bamako, is a communal project made with intention beyond danceability. Recorded across Senegal and Mali in late 2022, it reunites bandleaders Boubacar Gaye and Bassidi Koné with their homelands, not just to revisit musical roots, but to reconnect with family, friends, and stories too often left untold in the Australian mediascape.
“We wanted to tell our story, to speak the truth,” says Gaye, a charismatic frontman and master of the djembe. “Many Africans migrate and stay silent, keeping the story to themselves, but it hurts because that trauma is why they don’t want to go back home.” For Gaye, who grew up in Senegal amid political instability, making this album was both a personal and political act.
Ausecuma is itself a portmanteau - Au (Australia), Se (Senegal), Cu (Cuba), Ma (Mali) - symbolising the multicultural makeup of the group. On Dakar Bamako, that fusion blends West African percussion with Afro-Cuban horns, contemporary rap, balafon, and kora. The album is animated, colourful, and full of joy, but is undercut with a real message.
“We have a political issue in West Africa,” says Gaye. “Hopefully, people here will explore the story behind the music and understand more… I hope they go deep into the album. There are so many messages in there.”.
The opening track, Farafina, captures that complexity. Played in Pulaar and Bambara, it carries a call for emigrated Africans to return home after chasing false promises in Europe. The balafon dances over layered percussion, but the lyrics ground the track in reality.
Similarly, Jeunesse Africaine, featuring Mariama Konaté, a Malian singer, offers an elegy to African youth who’ve left in search of better opportunities. Boubacar explains the song's title, “It means, it doesn't matter where you are, you have a responsibility to come home and to do something for your community”. The tone evokes a longing for home within Africa, emphasising the youth's significance in the continent's future. Even as the melodies celebrate culture, the message behind them is unmistakable.
Produced by Music in Exile, a not-for-profit record label founded in 2019 by Joe Alexander, the label was created to give culturally and linguistically diverse artists access to resources and platforms in Australia. “There are so many different kinds of people in our community and so many stories,” Alexander says. “I think it’s cool that we get the chance to hear those stories.”
More than an album, Dakar Bamako is a message to those forced from home, to those in positions of power, and to audiences in Australia who may not yet understand the deepseated difficulties faced by African communities living here.