尤苏·恩多尔

Youssou "Madjiguène" N'Dour (also Ndour, French: [jusu (ɛ)nduʁ]; Wolof: Yuusu "Maajigéen" Nduur [juːsu ⁿd̺uːɾ]; born 1 October 1959) is a Senegalese singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and politician. N'Dour helped develop a style of popular Senegambian music known as mbalax, a genre that has sacred origins in the Serer music njuup tradition and ndut initiation ceremonies. From April 2012 to September 2013, he was Senegal's Minister of Tourism.

Rolling Stone described him in 2004 as "perhaps the most famous singer alive" in Senegal and much of Africa, and ranked him in 2023 at number 69 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. N'Dour is the subject of the award-winning films Return to Gorée (2007) directed by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud and Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love (2008) directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. In 2006, N'Dour portrayed Olaudah Equiano in the film Amazing Grace.

Early life

Ethnically, N'Dour is Serer, born to a Serer father and a Toucouleur mother. However, culturally, N'Dour is Wolof. He was born in Dakar. He started performing at the age of 12 and would later perform regularly with the Star Band, Dakar's most popular group during the 1970s.

Despite N'Dour's maternal connection to the traditional griot caste, he was not raised in that tradition, which he learned instead from his sibling. Although patrilineally from the noble N'Dour family, his parents' world-view encouraged a modern outlook, leaving him open to two cultures and thereby inspiring N'Dour's identity as a modern griot. As a Mouride disciple, taalibé in Wolof, a Muslim of the Mouride brotherhood, one of the large four Sufi orders in Senegambia, he often incorporated aspects of Islamic music and chants into his work.

Music career

1970s: Beginnings with joining the "Star Band" and its spin-offs

At the age of 15, Youssou N'Dour joined a band called Diamono and, in 1975, toured with this band in West Africa.

In 1976 when N'Dour was 16 years old, he signed a contract to sing with Ibra Kasse's Star Band at Kasse's "Miami club" in Dakar where he would become a sensation. In 1978, N'Dour followed, as several members of the Star Band did, some musicians that would form Étoile de Dakar, a band that made important contributions to Senegal's newly-evolving musical style called mbalax, which incorporated traditional Senegalese music into the Latin styles that had dominated Senegalese popular music.

Although they quickly became one of the city's most popular bands, the group was short-lived due to internal problems. "Étoile de Dakar" split into two groups: "Étoile 2000" and "Super Étoile de Dakar". The latter group included N'Dour, guitarist Jimi Mbaye, bassist Habib Faye, and tama (talking drum) player Assane Thiam. Super Étoile de Dakar produced four albums on cassette in just a few months and eventually evolved into N'Dour's backing band.

1990s: Continued mainstream success as eclectic and genre-crossover artist

By 1991, he had opened his own recording studio, and, by 1995, his own record label, Jololi.

N'Dour is one of the most celebrated African musicians in history. His mix of traditional Senegalese "mbalax" with eclectic influences, ranging from Cuban rumba to jazz, soul and hip-hop, has won him an international fan base of millions. In the West, N'Dour has collaborated with Peter Gabriel, Axelle Red, Sting, Alan Stivell, Bran Van 3000, Neneh Cherry, Wyclef Jean, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Chapman, James Newton Howard, Branford Marsalis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Dido, Lou Reed, Bruce Cockburn, and others.