| You, Africa! You, Africa! records the path-breaking 1994 tour of nine West African nations by legendary Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour. In the process, it offers a fascinating African variation on the familiar superstar "tour" film. Born in the poor Medina district of Dakar in 1959, Youssou N'Dour was singing professionally in local clubs by the age of twelve. Today he is the leading exponent of world fusion pop, blending traditional music with reggae, jazz and rock. He has successfully reunited late 20th century pop forms and techniques with the African sounds and rhythms at the root of so much of this music. As a result, he has influenced musicians as diverse as Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Branford Marsalis and Paul Simon. His band, Super Etoile, founded in 1979 and now one of the best known in Africa, embodies this unique musical blend in appearance as well as sound. Dressed in boubous and baseball jerseys, they play both traditional drums and electric guitars and dance to hyperkinetic African rhythms mixed with the latest steps from music videos. It is one thing to hear this music in a convention center or auditorium, another to see it performed, as in this film, before enthusiastic young African audiences who live and breath its unique hybrid sensibility. In brief interviews
during private moments on the tour, Youssou N'Dour discusses the serious
political commitment behind his music. For example, he explains that
one song about a crocodile who tries to entice a bird from its tree
is meant to symbolize African nations tempted to rely on the West for
aid. (It's interesting to compare how this same song is used in Picc
Mi.) Youssou N'Dour explains that he undertook the immense organizational
challenges of the tour as part of his on-going efforts to bring world-class
touring and recording facilities back to Africa. He sees himself as
a wommat (Wolof for griot) for an entire generation of young Africans
and people around the world, for whom his music expresses a modern,
trans-national sensibility still distinct from homogenized, commercial
American pop music.
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"If any Third
World performer has a shot at the sort of universal popularity last
enjoyed by Bob Marley, it's Youssou, a singer with a voice so extraordinary
that the history of Africa seems locked inside it." "Youssou N'Dour
is the one African progressing inexorably toward an uncompromised world
pop fusion everybody else only theorizes about." Director: Ndiouga
Moctar Ba Video
Purchase: $195
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