On Wednesday night, Tiken Jah Fakoly, Africa’s most famous reggae singer, did a concert in Dakar. Like his music or not, he is the most influential musician on the continent today, driving fear into the politicians he denounces in his songs, and stirring up the crowds of dissatisfied youth who, living under often-oppressive political regimes, have little other believable leadership to listen to.

His big hit at the moment in Senegal is a song called ‘Open the borders,’ and asks why ‘they’ should be able to apply for a visa to an African country and travel the very same day when ‘we’, Africans, are unlikely to ever get visas to visit Europe. ‘We only want to travel, and also work,’ Tiken sings in his raspy reggae voice, ‘but we didn't refuse you your visas.’

On Wednesday night we had sat through a handful of hip-hop performances, waiting for Tiken to come on. One of my favourite artists, Xuman, did his piece and finished it off with a quick verbal attack on the government, at which point the organisers cut his microphone and he was ushered off the stage. When Tiken Jah did finally arrive, late and clearly tired, the momentum was a little lost. Still, he pounded out the old classics, including one of my favourites, 'Quitte le pouvoir' (leave the power), in which he changed the words of one chorus to (translation from French), 'if you love Senegal, get out of power'.

The next afternoon, a colleague called me to see if I had heard the news. The Interior Minister had banned Tiken Jah from the country. His criticisms during the concert had not escaped the president's notice and from now on, he would be persona no grata, unable to come back to the country where he is a living legend. Considering riots rocked Dakar just a month ago, with young people making it clear they are no longer going to put up with the unjustified spending of public cash while the average Jo fights to even earn enough to feed themselves, it seemed a brave decision. The days of freedom of speech in Senegal might be well and truly over.

*****

Last night, with a plane to catch at 6am, my visiting friend showed enthusiasm for one last night out in Dakar. I wasn't sure what was on and at midnight, we were still sitting at home contemplating the outing over G and Ts. I couldn't for the life of me think of anywhere new and different to go to, since we have been to at least one concert a night for the last 8 days. It suddenly came to me: an old dark bar I used to go to when I first lived here, when I had a boyfriend who played in a band. Jo and I got our best Saturday-night-in-Dakar outfits on and set off for Keur Adriene in some dark corner of the city.

At the door we were met by a dreadlocked singer, who insisted on telling us he was from Paris, and then showed us to some seats inside the long, dark room. A fish tank had been added to the rear wall since my last visit almost three years ago, and some flashing lights had been strung up along the side wall, presumably with Christmas in mind. But other than that, it was all the same, a few hookers at the bar, rows of low tables and plastic chairs set on a cracked concrete floor, and men drinking cheap beer and looking bored. It felt good to be back.

The band, who had the unfortunate luck of being positioned in a corner of the room infront of a huge screen playing silent Lucky Dube music clips, were warming up with some elevator-music standards. "It's not terrible," said Jo, optimistically. We decided to stay.

The waiter came along, a fat man in a baseball shirt and cap, and asked gruffly what we wanted to drink. Jo said she wanted water. He looked annoyed and said there wasn't any. "What, none at all?" she asked. "No," he said.

"Well, I'll share her drink then," she said. Gin in this country comes in triple measures and one is enough for a small army.

"You have to have your own," he said, really pissed off.

"Even if you don't have what I want? Ok, I'l have a Coke."

The waiter brought our drinks, and when he came back with the change, he screwed the note up in his hand and threw it at me.

"He's not a natural," Jo said.

Next, a young guy came up to me and whispered in my ear, "They don't have that in France!" nodding to the band who had started some quick-fire sabar drum playing.

"Well, quite possibly not, but then I'm not from France," I replied, not hiding the fact that I hate being confused for a French person.

"Do you have an email address?" he asked.

"No."

"All French people have an email address," he said, unwittingly spitting on me, before storming off.

Luckily the singer, whose name I didn't catch even when I went up to him afterwards and tried to find out who they were, was fantastic. As much energy as a young Youssou, two sabar drummers who looked like they had been dragged out of bed by their older brother to play for him but were in fact the best drummers I have seen in a long time, and a tama player in Malcolm X glasses who danced with his little talking drum tucked under his arm and set the entire place on fire. It was arse-shaking silly dancing all round, sexy women with tiny tops billowing up to the tama-player and shaking their buttocks until he could drum no more and men in flat caps losing themselves in this incredibly loud, fast rhythm, blissfully unaware of how silly, to foreign eyes, it could all look. It was one of those moments where I thought, if I had to capture 'Dakar' in one real scene, this would be it, and how lucky I was to be there.