{"id":3567,"date":"2011-08-21T08:57:26","date_gmt":"2011-08-21T15:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3567"},"modified":"2011-08-21T08:58:52","modified_gmt":"2011-08-21T15:58:52","slug":"youssou-n%e2%80%99dour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/youssou-n%e2%80%99dour\/","title":{"rendered":"YOUSSOU N\u2019DOUR"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

YOUSSOU N\u2019DOUR<\/h1>\n

A Senegal-born international superstar finds a familiar spirit in Jamaica<\/strong><\/h2>\n

For Senegalese vocal legend Youssou N\u2019Dour, making a reggae album was all about completing a circle. After all, one of reggae\u2019s most prominent strands of DNA comes from the music of African slaves brought over during the 1800s by European-held slaves\u2014a connection that was particularly important to the music of reggae\u2019s greatest legend, Bob Marley. \u201cI\u2019m trying to know the music of the people who left Africa as slaves,\u201d N\u2019Dour says.<\/p>\n

For Dakar-Kingston<\/em>\u2014recorded, as the title suggests, in his native Dakar and Jamaica\u2019s capital city\u2014N\u2019Dour called upon producer Tyrone Downie, former keyboardist for Marley\u2019s backing band the Wailers. Using both African and Jamaican musicians, including veteran Jamaican guitarist Earl \u201cChinna\u201d Smith, N\u2019Dour reimagines some of his own classic tunes as reggae grooves.<\/p>\n

It is the two songs bookending the album that perhaps best exemplify that connection between reggae and mbalax<\/em>, the Senegalese dance music that N\u2019Dour helped popularize in the 1970s as a member of the popular band \u00c9toile de Dakar. Opening Dakar-Kingston <\/em>is a new original simply titled \u201cMarley\u201d\u2014co-written by Yusuf Islam, better known as Cat Stevens\u2014and the closer is a heartfelt cover of Marley\u2019s own \u201cRedemption Song.\u201d The latter, N\u2019Dour says, \u201cis really close to me because of the content and because of the power coming from this\u00a0simple song with guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n

N\u2019Dour says it wasn\u2019t difficult to adjust his exuberant singing style to conform to the easier-going reggae rhythms. \u201cWhen you do mbalax<\/em> music,\u201d he says, \u201cit\u2019s really complicated, so you are more involved.\u00a0But when you do reggae music, there is a lot of space for my voice.\u201d On the new album N\u2019Dour switches easily between vocalizing in French, English and his native Wolof. Naturally, that means that when he performs in places like the United States and Europe, many listeners are unable to understand the lyrics. But that doesn\u2019t\u00a0worry him. \u201cPeople get the ambience of the music,\u201d says N\u2019Dour, 51, who has collaborated in the past with such western fans as Sting, Peter Gabriel and Neneh Cherry. \u201cWhen I started out, people in the U.S. said they only listened to music from the U.S., but now more people are open to listening to world music.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Jeff Tamarkin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YOUSSOU N\u2019DOUR A Senegal-born international superstar finds a familiar spirit in Jamaica For Senegalese vocal legend Youssou N\u2019Dour, making a reggae album was all about completing a circle. After all, one of reggae\u2019s most prominent strands of DNA comes from the music of African slaves brought over during the 1800s by European-held slaves\u2014a connection that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[2457,2459,1636,2460,10156,2458,2456],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3567"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3570,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3567\/revisions\/3570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}