One afternoon nearly a decade ago, my older sister Binetou joined me in the kitchen of our new home and handed me an album. With equal amounts urgency and excitement, she told me that I must listen to it. Adding to my curiosity was the fact that it was a CD, well into the era of iTunes and Limewire. I remember this meeting feeling almost clandestine, like I wouldn’t be able to find this music anywhere else. Of course, that was far from reality: The album was Vampire Weekend’s self-titled debut, which set into motion one of modern indie rock’s biggest crossovers after it was released 10 years ago this week.

My sister’s insistence made sense as soon as I listened. Her thrill for this new discovery—and her assurance that it would matter to me as well—had everything to do with the specificity of our lives. We had grown up in the suburbs of Paris in the late 1980s and ’90s, bathed in African music. Our father Ibrahima Sylla, who passed away in 2013, was a producer, and the independent label he created, Syllart Records (formerly Syllart Productions), had kickstarted the careers of artists including Diénéba Seck, Sekou Kouyaté, Ismaël Lô, Youssou N’Dour, Salif Keïta, Thione Seck, Sekouba Bambino, and Kandia Kouyaté. Coexisting in Syllart’s impressive discography was everything from Senegalese mbalax and Congolese rumba, to the jelis and griots of Mali and zouk mandingue.

My father’s productions were characterized by a push and pull between traditionalism and modernity, embodied by his most cherished project: Africando, a band that took a global view of salsa music by weaving together rhythms from South America, West and Central Africa, and the Maghreb. A constant search for hybrid sounds, along with a strong sense of our roots, are two things my sister and I inherited from him (and would also become constitutive of our identities as children of immigrants living in France). Perhaps it was inevitable that we would be drawn to musicians who reflected those same ambitions.

Congolese popular music such as soukous and rumba, influenced by Cuban music and popularized by artists like Tabu Ley Rochereau and Luambo Luanzo Makiadi, was also a significant part of my father’s catalog. In Vampire Weekend, my sister and I recognized the voices and hands that had been present in our various homes. It spoke directly to us, from the first notes of “Mansard Roof,” reminiscent of the syncopated sabar (traditional drums) of mbalax, to the springy rumba of “Bryn” and the call and response of “One (Blake’s Got a New Face)”’s chorus. “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” is the obvious tribute, borrowing the name of a popular dance style and evoking the work of Pépé Kallé and Nyboma (and their album Moyibi). The song’s simple and repetitive structure, led by the distinctly trebly tone of soukous guitar, reminded me of Soukous Stars’ “Marcory Gazoil,” though less hectic in rhythm. We felt pride in hearing our music echoed in this young band from New York. Vampire Weekend took us back to what was a sort of golden age for my family.

In the late 2000s, my taste shifted as my life changed. Puberty, a move to another city, and the resulting loneliness modified my relationship to music. I had always been an obsessive mainstream listener. But during this period, music came to replace everything that I had lost, particularly my sense of place and identity. Because these holes were immense, I demanded more out of music. I sought out other genres, my curiosity insatiable. I became studious. When I listened to a song, it was of utter importance that I didn’t miss a note, a change of mood, an instrument’s whisper at the back of the melody. Listening was an exercise in exhaustion.