Orchestra Boabab continues its US tour, bringing music from its latest release, Made in Dakar, to New York City for two free shows, today and tomorrow. This evening at 7 PM ET, the seminal Senegalese band will perform at Rockefeller Park on the Hudson River in downtown Manhattan as part of the summer's River to River Festival of free outdoor performances (rivertorivernyc.com). Tomorrow, the group will head to Brooklyn's MetroTech center for a noon event as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Rhythm & Blues Festival (bam.org).

You can catch a concert preview today at 2 PM ET, when Orchestra Baobab will be featured on WNYC's Soundcheck with host John Schaefer. Listen live then at wnyc.org.

The New Yorker's music critic Sasha Frere-Jones says that even though it's been nearly 40 years since the band first played together, "time has done nothing to diminish the group's quiet intensity." These days, says Frere-Jones, "Baobab is effortlessly alive and globally indeterminate, a soothing and bewitching puzzle that always feels worth solving." Read more at newyorker.com.

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Following the band's performance at The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, last week, which NPR webcast live (listen at npr.org), the Washington Post's Stephen Brookes writes: "[I]t's impossible to sit still when this Senegalese band gets moving, and it gets moving fast ... [I]t kept the crowd jumping all night." While he recognizes the truly collective effort on stage, Brookes points to the performance by the band's guitarist, Barthélemy Atisso (he of the "ferocious musical brain"), as "almost reason enough to see the show ... Attisso's a fascinating musical thinker, as he proved again and again." To read the concert review, visit washingtonpost.com.

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In the Pitchfork review of the new album, Made in Dakar, Joshua Klein says the band offers "seamless style blending" in a way that is "subtle, and always rooted in traditional music ... Orchestra Baobab is so smooth, so deceptively accessible, that for once the liner notes actually significantly enhance the listening experience."

Klein explains:

Each song here ... is equally rich in history, testament to one of the few positive outcomes of European occupation as they deftly incorporate soul and salsa, rumba and jazz, reggae and country, an exercise in cross-pollination made all the more impressive by the near invisibility of the threads connecting it all. That's ultimately what makes Orchestra Baobab such a joy: It's dance music, pure and simple, made for others to have a good time, easily appreciated on the basis of its musicianship alone (Attisso is particularly inspired throughout) but becoming more impressive the deeper you dig into what's actually being done.

To read the full review, visit pitchforkmedia.com.