Youssou N'Dour: Africa's world musician.

© G. Atger/Editing, Paris

The rise of a star

With his round face, slender physique and deceptively adolescent appearance, 39-year-old Youssou N’Dour seems younger than his age.
Even though his mother was a singer, a future as a star of “world music” was hardly on the cards for a boy born in a poor district of Dakar, Senegal. His dream was to become a footballer.
His father, a mechanic, gave him a strict upbringing and wanted young Youssou to be a model child, like his 20 brothers and sisters. N’Dour, whose schooling went as far as secondary level, managed to convince him that it was possible to be a musician without becoming a juvenile delinquent. In 1979, when he was 20, he formed his own group, l’Etoile de Dakar (which became Le Super Etoile in 1981) and created his own style of music, Mbalax, from the name of a traditional Wolof dance.
It took him 15 years to win international recognition. This came in 1986 when he caught the attention of Peter Gabriel. Through Gabriel, N’Dour got to know a number of famous English-language singers who introduced him to the state-of-the-art technology of the major recording studios.
In 1989 N’Dour really reached the top in world music with his album The Lion, and then went on to work with pop stars like Neneh Cherry, with whom he shared a gold disc in 1994 for their song Seven Seconds.
Twenty-six years after he started singing, N’Dour is the author of 115 songs. His fame spread even wider when his song La Cour des Grands was chosen as the official anthem for the 1998 World Cup. But he has always kept his feet on the ground and keeps a cool head even when talking about issues like racism, drugs or poverty. He discusses them with the same gentleness found in his songs.

S. A. O.

© Ch. Mounier/Sipa press, Paris

A child of the Medina

10:30.a.m., the Medina. Men and women sit chatting under the shade of the neem trees lining 15th Street, the sound of their voices occasionally drowned out by children’s cries. All along the street, vendors sit under big parasols with their wares—a jumble of school textbooks, Koranic pamphlets, second-hand clothing and assorted potions—spread out on the ground in front of them. The wall of a seashore Muslim cemetery closed decades ago after it became full, is at the far end. The house where Youssou N’dour was born is just across the street.
It wasn’t hard to find. “Youssou N’Dour’s house? Straight on, at the end. When you get there, ask again and anyone will show you which one it is.” The building where the famous singer lived until he was a teenager is having work done on it and is for the moment uninhabited.
A childhood friend, A.N., says: “Youssou N’Dour is from here. As a child, all he knew was the Medina.” With a hint of nostalgia in his voice, he recalls long hours spent drinking tea together, playing football or performing with the Khandrang Jazz band, formed at the end of the 1960s with a group of friends whom the future star introduced to singing. They accompanied him on castanets.
Hardly anything is left of those days. As he became famous, the singer stopped seeing his “real” friends of old, says A.N., hastening to add that this is because “You”, N’Dour’s nickname in these parts, has “bad advisers.” But, he says, “he’s a good guy and if he came by in his car, he’d stop and say hello to me.”
Neighbours say “You” is seldom seen these days on 15th Street. He lives in the classy suburb of Almadies, near Yoff airport. “But we’d love it if he dropped by,” says one woman, obviously proud of the singer’s success.
Another local, Aziz, says that if “You” was more visible, the fans would not run after him so much. Aziz, who has a degree in management from a European university and was a playmate of N’Dour’s, says the singer is warm-hearted, but complains that he has not used his wealth to do anything to help relieve the Medina’s chronic youth unemployment problem.
Abdoulaye Camara is permanent secretary of “Harmony and Initiative in the Medina” (Cime), an association set up last year after a suggestion made by N’Dour, its president. He sees things quite differently. “He comes to three-quarters of our meetings and if he can’t make it he always lets us know,” he says. Camara is proud that many people are keen to fund the activities of “You’s” association. The singer, his hero, is “manna for the Medina,” he says.
An onlooker adds that everyone in the Medina is fond of N’dour because of his “modesty, efficiency, kindness and sense of friendship.” True or false? Aziz the young professional who wants “You” to do something specific, had never heard of the association and says when asked about its impact that he’ll “believe it when he sees it.”

C. T. N.

Birth of a myth

Youssou N’Dour’s talent and charisma are not enough to explain his international success. His breakthrough on the pop scene, which took place at the same time as World Music was catching on in the West during the 1980s, is partly the result of a non-stop communications effort. “His press attachés have succeeded in positioning him in the place he deserves,” says François Belorgey, former director of the French cultural centre in Dakar. “He was already tremendously popular at home.”
The singer soon “realized how necessary it is to cultivate a commitment compatible with his artistic intelligence,” says Senegalese university teacher Ousmane Diakhaté. He was inspired by musicians like Peter Gabriel, a human rights activist. His sensibility did the rest. His appeal is based on the “sincerity” of his humanitarianism, says Mr. Belorgey.
His attachment to his country’s culture and his climb to the top of the charts have made him a role model for local young people, adds Mr. Belorgey. They can identity with the soft-spoken native of the Medina, a poor Dakar neighbourhood. That is explained, Mr. Diakhaté says, by “the need for a myth” which appears in times of crisis, when people want to be reassured.

S. A. O.