Close to My Music

By Barry Didcock, "It began in Africa" - The Sunday Herald - Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Sunday, January 11, 2009

He’s been courted by stars from Springsteen to Neneh Cherry, and helped shape the music of his native Senegal. Now Youssou N’Dour brings his virtuoso voice to the Celtic Connections festival.

Having one of the most famous singing voices in the world would generally be considered a boon, but for Senegal's Youssou N'Dour such a gift brings responsibilities too. "I have to sleep eight hours a night before a concert," he laughs.

Right now he's at his home in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and sounding like he's more up for a party than a nap. But it's appropriate in this year of all things Burns that we celebrate the author of some of the world's most soulful song lyrics by welcoming to Scotland one of the world's most soulful singers. And so it'll be early to bed on the night of January 22 for Youssou N'Dour, ahead of his appearance at the Celtic Connections festival the following day.

N'Dour appears with his nine-strong Super Etoile band and will dig deep into his most recent album, 2007's Rokku Mi Rokka. He will also draw on older works like The Lion, his 1990 breakthrough album and (hopefully) Egypt, his album of Sufi devotional chants. Released in 2005 and recorded with Egypt's 14-strong Fathy Salama Orchestra, Egypt marries N'Dour's soaring vocals to North African instruments like the oud and the tabla. It deservedly won him a Grammy.

More importantly, it allowed him to proclaim his Sufi faith and in particular its message of tolerance and peace. N'Dour keeps more than a weather eye on how Islam is portrayed in the West and doesn't much like what he sees, which is in part why he recorded Egypt.

"It's like a different religion," he says. "There's a minority who are really radical and the Western media loves them. They show only the minority but portray the whole religion as being like that. The majority of Muslims are for peace. We have to use the same methods - the media, movies, music - to talk about the real Islam and to talk about the majority. We have to use the media to tell people we are not OK with violence."

Youssou N'Dour has a set list, then, which can switch between transcendental meditations on 19th-century Islamic poets, acoustic love songs sung in French or his native Wolof, scorching Afro-funk, and radio-friendly pop hits like 7 Seconds, his 1994 duet with Neneh Cherry. The man can dance a bit too, and has in his band longtime musical collaborator Habib Faye, probably the best bassist in the world. It's quite a package.

He's joined on the Celtic Connections programme by an equally impressive package - a roster of top musicians from neighbouring Mali. Prime among them is kora player Toumani Diabate, best known in the West for Kulanjan, his 1999 album with American blues veteran Taj Mahal, and for In The Heart Of The Moon, his 2005 album with the late Ali Farka Toure.

"He's great, I'm a big fan," says N'Dour. "Toumani's a great musician and someone I really respect for his music. I can't wait to see him."

Appearing on the same bill are Diabate's friend and musical collaborator Bassekou Kouyate, who plays the ngoni, a lute-like instrument. Like Diabate, Kouyate also recorded with Taj Mahal, and recorded and toured with Ali Farka Toure. Among those who have championed him in the West are former Blur singer Damon Albarn and DJ Fatboy Slim. His debut solo album, 2007's Segu Blue, showed a world music star in the making.

Finally there is singer Oumou Sangare, known as "the songbird of Wassoulou", a reference to her upbringing in the area south of the Niger River. At 40 she's the youngest of the Malian trio.
"Wow, it's going to be great," N'Dour laughs, evidently unaware until now of the presence of those three on the Celtic Connections bill. "The last time I saw Oumou was in Bamako the capital of Mali last year and the last time I saw Bassekou was at a concert in Germany. He played a lot on my last album."

Harder to deal with than ensuring a good night's sleep on tour are N'Dour's responsibilities as the elder statesman of world music, a role he has filled for over 20 years now. In that time he's been courted by an impressive list of Western musicians - among them Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Paul Simon and Wyclef Jean - and become a cultural and political icon in his native Senegal.

It was his first Western collaborator, however, who has proved the most influential for both his music and his career. Peter Gabriel was the vocalist with rock band Genesis in the 1970s but, by the early 1980s, was a musician whose questing mind was taking him well beyond Europe in search of new frontiers.

"I first met him around 1985 when I was playing a concert in London," N'Dour recalls. "He came to my dressing room afterwards and said, I really love your voice'. I didn't know who he was. The day after, I started to listen to his music and I heard Biko. That was the connection."

Gabriel asked N'Dour to contribute to his platinum-selling So album in 1986 and, later, to go on the road with him in a gruelling 150-date tour. That in turn led to a slot on Amnesty International's 1988 Human Rights Now! Tour where N'Dour performed Gabriel's Biko with Lou Reed.

N'Dour was only in his mid-20s at the time, but he had already been performing for well over a decade. Born in Dakar in 1959, he began singing with the Star Band in the early 1970s - he was known as "the little prince of Dakar" - and formed his own band, Etoile De Dakar, in 1979.
Recordings were rudimentary, often released on cassette only, and far from the polished affairs he would later produce with the Virgin and Sony labels. But N'Dour was instrumental in sculpting the "mbalax" sound that still dominates Senegalese music today.

It's basically a grab-bag of Western influences - mostly soul, jazz and Latin - laid over traditional Senegalese percussion, but which in his case is topped with a fluttering, virtuoso voice of extraordinary power.

There were other early musical influences as well. In his early teens N'Dour discovered the music of Marvin Gaye while dancing at Dakar clubs such as the quaintly named Matinee Disco. Through an uncle who ran a record shop in Dakar he was introduced to Bob Marley. Later, Prince became a firm favourite.

N'Dour achieved worldwide fame in 1994 when 7 Seconds became a global top-10 hit. He and Neneh Cherry stayed friends afterwards but, though they performed the song at Murrayfield during the Live 8 concert in 2005, it was 13 years before they worked together in the studio again. That was on Wake Up (It's Africa Calling), the last track on Rokku Mi Rokka.

"7 Seconds was a magical song but it was really a pop song and afterwards I always wanted to invite Neneh to sing a song in my style, in something close to me," he explains. "I talked to her and she was excited about doing that. When I meet someone like Neneh Cherry or Peter Gabriel, it's not about an album or a song; it's about a collaboration, about bringing everything to another level and sharing what we have."

Today, Youssou N'Dour is one of world music's few genuine superstars, along with his compatriot Baaba Maal and perhaps a handful of others. "I feel like an ambassador for my country and for my countrymen," he says.

"I feel it's important to bring my music to different places, to see how people appreciate my music and let them have a connection with my country."

His profile in Senegal is like Bono and Bob Geldof rolled into one. He owns his own recording studio - it's been hailed as Africa's equivalent of Lee "Scratch" Perry's famous Jamaican studio The Black Ark - as well as a radio station and a nightclub. He even owns a newspaper, the Dakar-based daily L'Observateur. "Senegal's number one!" he says proudly. The newspaper was founded, he says, as a job-creation scheme as much as anything else and, beyond offering some musical direction to his radio station, he has a hands-off approach to media ownership.

"I don't write the articles," he says. "Even if they want to interview me, they have a lot of difficulty getting it." But, he adds: "Sometimes it brings me difficulties. If the paper writes about the government, people say This is Youssou N'Dour's newspaper'. If I meet them the government I just say I only give them jobs!'"

His political clout reaches well beyond Senegal, though. In March 2003 he made waves worldwide when he cancelled a major US tour in protest at America's plans to invade Iraq. In a forcefully worded statement he wrote: "It is my strong conviction that the responsibility for disarming Iraq should rest with the United Nations. As a matter of conscience I question the United States government's apparent intention to commence war in Iraq."

"It was very hard decision to make," he says. "The promoters were angry with me, really upset about it. But it was my only chance to say what I was thinking about the war. I still feel proud of that decision."

So would he ever consider standing for political office? "No, I don't need it," he says. "I'm someone who is inside of what's happening here and can denounce sometimes and be outraged sometimes. But when you go for political office, you're looking for a job and I have my job already.

"People think that I have a position where I might be a politician one day, but I don't think so. I'm going to stay close to my music. I want to have my freedom."

Youssou N'Dour and Super Etoile play the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on January 23.

[Visit Youssou N'dur website http://www.youssou.com/]

[Picture from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youssou_N'Dour].