Youssou N’Dour thrills Gusman Center crowd
BY JORDAN LEVIN
A whole contingent of ecstatic Senegalese cheered their countryman Youssou N’Dour at his concert Friday night, but they were only marginally more excited than the rest of the crowd that packed the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts.
A slim, middle-aged man with a quiet demeanor, clad in loose silver-blue shirt and pants, N’Dour seemed an unlikely global music star when he walked casually onstage.
But as soon as he started to sing, his soul and charisma transcended any cultural preconceptions. N’Dour may sing mostly in Wolof but the power, joy and humanity of his music need no translation. By the second song, the whole theater was clapping along. ”It doesn’t matter that we don’t know what he’s saying,” said one woman. “Because I feel like we do.”
The Rhythm Foundation, which last presented N’Dour in Miami in 2004, gave us an added treat this time by presenting him with The Super Etoile of Dakar, the band he started with 25 years ago. They’re eight superb musicians who play together with dazzling, fluid precision; melody, harmony and rhythm flowing inextricably together in a powerful river of music. Bassist Hibab Faye, and guitarist Jimmy Mbaye — whose solos could sing like a saxophone or a voice, with an extraordinary subtlety — were particularly astonishing, as were Thio Mbaye, on African percussion, and Assane Thiam, summoning thunder from the tiny tama, or talking drum, and making the African women crowded up front vibrate as if they were plugged right into his drum. At one point they ran up onstage, dancing and hugging and kissing the smiling N’Dour.
Perhaps their expertise and familiarity made N’Dour even more comfortable, but then, this is a man who’s played stadiums (three of them for the Live 8 concerts in 2005) and venues worldwide. His face beaming, striding the rim of the stage to slap a thicket of upreaching hands, mothers in hijab holding up their children, awestruck yuppies, shrieking Senegalese women in gleaming robes, N’Dour had the kind of warm, effortlessly commanding presence that electrifies a crowd.
His voice is intense, rich, and wonderfully, uniquely expressive. N’Dour sings with some of the nasal intensity and vibrating overtones of Middle Eastern vocalists, but without dissonance; his voice can soar as high and sweet as a falsetto, but without becoming sharp or light. You can hear the full-tilt emotion of soul, the soaring spirituality of gospel — whether from the influence of contemporary pop, or because those musics have their deepest roots in Africa.
N’Dour sang dance songs and love songs and spiritual songs, and songs that paid tribute to his continent’s suffering and spirit. ”Many times what they show people here about Africa is poverty, AIDS, war — this is not the only measure of Africa,” he said as he introduced the spine-tingling, gospel-like New Africa.
