Senegalese music star Thione Seck is dead

Thione Seck, on the left, and Youssou Ndour, during a concert in Dakar in September 2012. -

He was one of the stars of Senegalese music.

Singer and lyricist Thione Seck died Sunday in Dakar (Senegal) "from an illness", announced his lawyer Ousmane Seye.

He was 66 years old.

Former singer in the 1970s of the Baobab Orchestra, a formation adept at Afro-Cuban salsa with Senegalese sauce, Thione Seck founded in the 1980s Raam Daam, a group of pure mbalax, a genre born from the meeting between several local rhythms, vocals, funk, and sometimes reggae.

His discography notably includes

,

and

.

Buried in the afternoon

Coming from a family of griots, Thione Ballago Seck was one of the most famous musicians of Senegal with Youssou Ndour, Omar Pène, Ismaël Lô or even his own son, Wally Seck.

According to Senegalese media, Thione Seck was to be buried Sunday afternoon in the Muslim cemetery in Yoff, a district of Dakar.

The musician's last years were marred by a long legal saga in a case of counterfeit banknotes, which earned him a nine-month pre-trial detention in 2015. In early March, the Supreme Court of Senegal quashed all the proceedings against him, his lawyer said on Sunday.

• Music

• Singer

• Senegal

• Culture