N’Dour’s Language Lesson

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Youssou N’Dour is arguably the most well-known and critically heralded living African musician, and for good reason: In more than 20 years of playing and recording, he has invented languages, introduced indigenous forms of music to the popular canon, and shined unflinching lights on the lives of his fellow Africans. The Senegalese artist possesses one of the most expressive voices in music, and backing that unmistakable instrument is a supremely gifted group, the Super Etoile, which has been with Mr. N’Dour since the early 1980s. Throughout its career, the band has spiced its already gripping West African sound with appropriated Western rock and pop, creating a singular sound in African and global pop in the process.

It’s a vibrant, personal music that never stays in one place for too long. Mr. N’Dour and Super Etoile have always thrived on blending cultures, be it their traditional griot praise-singing and drumming with Afro-Cuban arrangements and rock instrumentation that the band forged early in its career — a style called mbalax — or with Western artists such as Peter Gabriel and Neneh Cherry, with whom Mr. N’Dour scored a 1994 hit, “7 Seconds.”

Recently, Mr. N’Dour has enjoyed a remarkably rich recording streak since joining the Nonesuch label, from 2002’s moving, acoustic “Nothing’s In Vain” to2004’s astonishing “Egypt,” which found the Muslim singer exploring Sufi lyricism. The latter is boldly moving and political, and arguably Mr. N’Dour’s career highlight to date. Present in all of these musical melting pots are Mr. N’Dour’s infectious intelligence and humanity. He and his band create music that makes life more joyous, and there are few callings more worth pursuing. Onstage, the group, which will perform on Wednesday and Thursday at the Nokia Theatre, is unstoppable, as Mr. N’Dour and Super Etoile often reach back into their cavernous songbook to reinvent signature songs in ingenious, thrilling ways.

Mr. N’Dour’s latest album, “Rokku Mi Rokka,” isn’t half as radical as “Egypt.” In fact, it is more polished and commercial, which is due entirely to its organizing idea. Wolof, the language in which Mr. N’Dour writes the bulk of his lyrics, is indigenous to the southern portion of Senegal, from which he hails. “Rokku Mi Rokka” is an exploration of the music from Senegal’s northern and eastern Sahel regions that border Mali and Mauritania. Today, music from this area — particularly from Mali — is not only ripe with commercially successful artists such as Salif Keita, the late, great Ali Farka Touré, and the electric Tuareg band Tinariwen, but also musically inviting, attracting Western artists such as Blur’s Damon Albarn, Ry Cooder, and John Lee Hooker. Earlier this year, the Baltimore-based Jack Carneal launched his Yaala Yaala label with three intoxicating CDs of music he encountered while living in Bougouni, Mali, in 1999. A great deal of the music from this West African region is spacious and groove-oriented — funky, for lack of a better term.

Mr. N’Dour’s exploration of the sounds of northern Senegal’s desert music yields an appropriately lithe album. Lyrically, the 48-year-old artist sticks to some familiar subjects — freedom, the power of the mind to think and remember, Sufism, traveling, and joy — but musically, “Rokku Mi Rokka” sounds more like the jaunty music associated with Mali. The title translates to “give and take” from Pulaar, the language spoken by the Tukulor people, who lend the album its primary percussive framework: the wango traditional rhythms. A number of the songs are co-written by the northern Senegalese singer Ba Mody, and the Super Etoile band is supplemented with several musicians on traditional instruments from the region as well, such as former Ali Farka Touré sideman Bassekou Kouyate.

It is Mr. Kouyate’s work that sets the initial mood here. His work on the ngoni — a lute with a funkier, banjo tone — provides the bubbling spine to the breezy “Sama Gammu,” a bewitching mysticism to the entrancing “Baay Faal,” and the blues filigree throughout “Sportif.”

The album’s best songs, though, seamlessly incorporate its northern influences into Mr. N’Dour’s all-are-welcome vibe. The gorgeous “Lett Ma (Indecision),” whose lyrics artfully tread a love-hate relationship with a hesitant mind, starts off with Mr. N’Dour’s supple tenor as it traces the song’s central melody a cappella before being joined by Mr. Kouyate’s loping ngoni, whose rich vibrato embodies the song’s vacillating subject. The rest of the band — three guitarists, a bassist, four percussionists, and a backing vocalist — comes in almost 1 1/2 minutes into the song to lay down an intoxicating hybrid of West African pop and classical Arabic music.

Sadly, lighting doesn’t strike twice for Mr. N’Dour on “Wake Up (It’s Africa Calling),” his new duet with Neneh Cherry, which closes the album. It’s a forgettable slice of world-beat hip-hop on which the two distinctive vocalists become mired in tepid music burdened with good intentions. But it doesn’t tarnish the album overall. “Rokku Mi Rokka” isn’t the great artistic statement that was “Egypt,” but even artists of Mr. N’Dour’s stature are allowed to make good-time albums that aren’t out to change the world.

Mr. N’Dour will perform tomorrow and Thursday at the Nokia Theatre (1515 Broadway at West 44th Street, 212-930-1950).


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