5 CDs Worth Your Time

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LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I'm incapable of separating my dislike of world music from my dislike of the dinner parties at which it's played. But Egypt, winner in the Best Contemporary World Music category, is not the usual easy-listening exotica shrink-wrapped for the appetizer course. The melodies traipse from Cairo to Dakar; the lyrics are in Wolof; the liner notes offer translation and explain that the songs are about Sufi scholars, most of whom seem to practice a West African strain of Islamic Calvinism. Lest you fear learning something, N'Dour's voice sweeps and swells with a passion that makes listening to him even in complete ignorance a form of enlightenment.