For a while in the early '80s, Orchestra Baobab was an African pop phenomenon, the must-see band from Senegal whose torrid 1982 release, Pirates Choice, helped kick-start international interest in West African music.

Then, as so often happens in Western pop music, Baobab was toppled. Its gently undulating dance music, which drew on rhythms derived from Cuban son, was displaced by the strident voice of Youssou N'Dour, another Senegalese artist, whose streetwise mbalax singing style became an overnight sensation. In 1985, after a disastrous album in which it tried to copy mbalax, Baobab broke up, its members bitter and disillusioned with an industry that dropped them from the peak of fame.

"A bunch of them didn't do music no more," guitarist Latfi Ben Geloune recalled recently from Dakar, Senegal, where the 11 reunited Baobab members, now in their late 40s and 50s, were still marveling over the release of Specialist in All Styles, their first album in 17 years.

"The generations coming after our own were interested in Youssou, and it was very difficult for a lot of musicians. I went back to do what I used to do, playing paso dobles and rock tunes in tourist hotels."

Others in the ensemble of as many as 15 walked away entirely. Lead guitarist Barthelemy Attisso, trained as a lawyer, went back to his native Togo and set up a law practice. Vocalist Rudy Gomis ran an African- language school for Western aid workers.

So when Nick Gold, the British record exec who helped revive the careers of the Buena Vista Social Club's neglected veterans, came looking for the famed Orchestra Baobab, he had to convince members who had established new lives that there was a worldwide audience for their music.

"He told us how people were spending lots of money for vintage copies of Pirates Choice," Geloune says, laughing in disbelief that the work, rereleased last year, could still inspire such feelings. "You don't believe talk like that. But we knew that at one time we were the best in our country, and I think inside we were curious to see what it would be like to do this again."

Gold and several of Baobab's vocalists arranged to send Attisso a guitar. After a 15-year hiatus, he told a British newspaper recently, he found it impossible to play at first. "My fingers didn't respond," he said. "But every night I'd stay up till 3 or 4 in the morning, practicing, and after three months, I found I could do it again."

Geloune says that the first rehearsals of the reunited Baobab were emotional. "We thought, man, we lost a lot of time. It was a pleasure, because we were all missing the way we used to play music when we were young. And it was also sad, because we realized that back then one of our problems was we didn't have someone who could manage and make things go for us."

This time, there were lots of people around to help, including N'Dour, who produced Specialist with Gold. N'Dour concentrated on Baobab's core sound, its deftly intertwined guitars cut with roaring saxophone. Resisting the impulse to update with electronic or other enhancements, N'Dour captured the energy that made the band, formed in 1970 to play a private club formed by businessmen and politicians, famous.

Though Baobab's membership has changed - one singer died in a car accident in 1974 - it remains one of Africa's most diverse pop acts, with members representing Togo and Guinea-Bissau as well as different Senegalese ethnicities. Some singers, such as Medoune Diallo, perform in the keening vocal style associated with northern Senegal's Toucouleur region, while others sing deeply spiritual chanted pieces in Wolof, Senegal's most popular language.

The unifying element, Geloune says, is the Cuban rhythm. During the '70s, Cuban dance music was omnipresent on Senegalese radio, and the musicians of Baobab were quick to sense its connection to African music.

"The rhythms are the same, and it has the same feeling, it comes from an African root," says Geloune, 53. "We were totally into all the Cuban bands - Orchestra Aragon, Johnny Pacheco, Arsenio Rodriguez. The shops used to import a lot of Cuban records here, and we would study them. The guitarists were all trying to make the best lines to play behind the singers, and we all wanted the music to have the Cuban swing to it."

Though Specialist's songs were written in the '70s and '80s, its performances reveal a more mature ensemble. The rhythms bounce with a breezy effortlessness prevalent in Cuban and Senegalese music, and the singers sound as if they have honed their phrases for decades. Some selections have a bittersweet, faintly melancholic air, while others - including the opening "Bul Ma Miin," about the need for respect and communication between generations - have a mournful, prayerlike feel. There are several round-robin vocal exchanges that celebrate Baobab's longevity, including the call-and-response "On Verra Ca" and "Homage a Tonton Ferrer," which features ad-libs from N'Dour and the Cuban great Ibrahim Ferrer.

Baobab's mature sound doesn't surprise Geloune. "Our way of playing is different than when we were young," he says. "Now, I can make my feeling really go through my technique. I think the intention of the song is better translated in the music now. It's softer... .

"In the 20 years we were gone, we became adults, old persons. I wouldn't say there was no feeling before, but we didn't have a lot of experience or technical ability. We were playing notes. The true feeling comes now."