Etoile de Dakar featuring Youssou N'Dour: Once Upon a Time in Senegal | CD review

(Sterns)This is the second outstanding Youssou N'Dour album released this year. First came I Bring What I Love, with its live reworking of songs from across his career. Now follows this two-CD set chronicling "the Birth of Mbalax 1979-81" and the history of the band that launched N'Dour's career, before he left with other musicians to form Super Etoile. In the Etoile era, Senegalese music was in transition, and the songs here include echoes of lilting African-Cuban fusions made famous earlier by...

Read full article Share article