TIME Special Advertising Feature: Youssou N'Dour, Creators at Carnegie

PHOTO BY GALILEA NIN

Youssou N'Dour
May 2004

Hour 1 Audio: WindowsMedia | Real

The Senegalese artist Youssou N'Dour is renowned for his remarkable range and poise and for his prodigious musical intelligence as a writer, bandleader and producer. He absorbs the entire Senegalese musical spectrum in his work, often filtering it through the lens of genre-defying rock or pop music from outside his culture. N'Dour has made mbalax—a blend of Senegal's traditional griot percussion and praise-singing with Afro-Cuban music—famous throughout the world during more than 20 years of recording and touring outside of Senegal with his band, The Super Étoile.

As a boy in the 1960s and 70s, N'Dour hustled gigs in the parking lots outside Dakar's dance clubs. His distinctive voice eventually earned him a reputation as a boy wonder. As early as age 12, N'Dour began performing at neighborhood religious ceremonies in the hard-bitten Medina section of Dakar, where he grew up as the first-born child of a pious auto mechanic and a griot singer.

By 1979, N'Dour had formed his band, and soon thereafter he launched an international career with the help of a Senegalese taxi drivers' association in France and a small circle of supporters in England. Today, N'Dour and The Super Étoile, acknowledged as Africa's most popular international live band, continue to play challenging Senegalese roots music. The Guardian (U.K.) has called their music "the finest example yet of the meeting of African and Western music: wholesome, urgent and thoughtful," while the world and folk music journal fRoots has dubbed N'Dour the "African artist of the century."

N'Dour's Nonesuch recordings include 2000's Grammy nominated Joko (The Link), the 2003 Grammy-nominated Nothing's in Vain (Coono du reer) and the upcoming 2004 release, Egypt. N'Dour remains a revered figure in his country, where he still resides, and throughout the ever-growing Senegalese diaspora. Each year, he presents the Great African Ball—a Senegalese-style dance party—in New York and Paris, featuring the kind of unhinged performances typical of the Dakar nightclubs. Collaborations with western musicians include a duet with Peter Gabriel on "In Your Eyes" (from Gabriel's 1985 album So) and the international hit "Seven Seconds," a duet with singer Neneh Cherry.

May's CREATORS AT CARNEGIE program features Youssou N'Dour and members of his band performing quieter, mostly unplugged mbalax songs at Zankel Hall. This latest installment in the CREATORS AT CARNEGIE series highlights the exciting collaboration that features Nonesuch Records' artists playing a key role in Carnegie Hall's new and adventurous programming.

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