YOUSSUO N'DOUR

Youssou N’Dour (born October 1, 1959, Dakar, Senegal) is a Senegalese singer known for his extraordinary vocal range and for introducing international audiences to mbalax—a Senegalese popular music style that blends Wolof traditional instrumental and vocal forms primarily with Cuban and other Latin American popular genres. He served as Senegal’s minister for culture and tourism (2012–13). N’Dour was raised in a devout Sufi Muslim household by a mother who was of Tukulor descent and a carrier of the bardic griot tradition and a father who was Serer. Like most other residents of Dakar since the mid-20th century, however, N’Dour grew up culturally and linguistically Wolof. He began singing at neighbourhood religious festivities when he was about 12 years old, and he and his band were performing outside various dance clubs in Dakar by the time he was in his early teens. (He was too young to play legally inside the clubs.) At age 16 N’Dour joined the regionally popular Star Band de Dakar. That group, with its incorporation of the Senegalese tama (talking drum) and Wolof and Malinke songs into the popular music repertoire, was a pioneer of the music genre that eventually became known as mbalax. N’Dour’s impressive vocal range quickly propelled him to prominence within the Star Band, and in 1977 he and several other band members left the group to form Étoile de Dakar. Although it shared some stylistic features with its parent band, Étoile de Dakar proudly promoted a more strongly Africanized version of the emergent mbalax music. Most of the group’s songs were sung in Wolof, using an ornamented vocal style—sometimes sustained and soaring, sometimes low and declamatory—that drew directly from the griot tradition. In keeping with the griot’s heritage as a storyteller, the songs often recounted history and offered advice on politics, religion, and current events. CLICK HERE TO STREAM HIS LATEST ALBUM