Word.ws English Dictionary

mbalax

mbalax noun: a genre of popular dance music chiefly performed in Senegal and The Gambia.

Noun

mbalax (uncountable)

  1. A genre of popular dance music chiefly performed in Senegal and The Gambia
    • Another local style — the Senegalese funk called mbalax — arrived with the singer Fallou Dieng, a protégé of the Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour.2008 January 15, Jon Pareles, “To See (and Hear) the World in Five Hours: Unique Sounds Ripe for Import”, in New York Times

Origin of mbalax

Borrowed from Wolof [Term?], meaning "rhythm".

Questions about mbalax

What does mbalax mean?
Mbalax means a genre of popular dance music chiefly performed in Senegal and The Gambia.
What part of speech is mbalax?
Mbalax is a noun.

Words near mbalax in the dictionary

  1. MBA
  2. MBaaS
  3. Mbabane
  4. Mbabaram
  5. Mbala
  6. mbalax
  7. mbalolo
  8. Mbama
  9. Mbandaka
  10. Mbangala
  11. Mbanie Island

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mbalax (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “mbalax.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mbalax. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.