If there was one Senegalese artist who I wish could have his music heard, and understood, by the masses, it's Souleyman Faye. But he probably won't ever find anyone to take him and his quirky band on, because of various stories about the harebrained activities he got up to on tour when he was with the group Xalam, which have become Dakar legends. But he is one of the city's finest, someone I could spend hours listening to and never- almost never- get bored.

As luck would have it, the one time he did let me down was when I had two friends visiting from England. Both in the music business, I took them to see him on their first Saturday night here. He played a set which wouldn't have sounded out of place in the foyer of some anodyne French-run hotel somewhere in west Africa. It was heavy on the keyboards, light on the poetic charm that Souleyman usually wields, with such force.

Last night, he had a new guitarist with him, who threw a whole new dimension on the set. Wavering between jazz and Afro-beat, I wasn't quite sure where it was going, until Souley turned up in a pork-pie hat and an acrylic beige waistcoat and leapt about on the small stage, an unlit pipe in his mouth.

He had a saxophonist with him, an old man in a wooly jumper, who wandered on mid way through the first set. He blew us all away. The bass guitarist, one of the tallest and quietest people I have ever seen, who plays with his eyes shut, his moustache curling aroung his clenched lips, was given his chance to break free. Thumbing his guitar with unusual ferocity, it had the effect that fear sometimes has on me: turning my stomach to liquid. There was some electricity in that room that took me out of Dakar and the shabby bar where I spend most of my Saturday nights, and into something much more hair-raising.