Youssou N'Dour's latest album, Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take), hits stores tomorrow, and it's already earning rave reviews. Earlier this month, on NPR's All Songs Considered, Rolling Stone contributing editor Robert Christgau called Youssou and Super Étoile "the best band in the world." It seems the press in London would agree: The Financial Times, BBC Music magazine, and the Guardian's Observer Music Monthly all give the new album their highest rating, five stars, with the Observer calling it "extraordinary" and "a new pinnacle in Youssou's career." In conjunction with the record's release, Nonesuch.com unveils a new mini-site featuring video interviews with Youssou and musicologist Lucy Duran, plus songs from the new album. Read excerpts from the interview transcript here.
Youssou N'Dour's latest album, Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take), hits stores tomorrow, and it's already earning rave reviews. Earlier this month, on NPR's All Songs Considered, Rolling Stone contributing editor Robert Christgau called Youssou and Super Étoile "the best band in the world." It seems the press in London would agree: The Financial Times, BBC Music magazine, and the Guardian's Observer Music Monthly all give the new album their highest rating, five stars, with the Observer calling it "extraordinary" and "a new pinnacle in Youssou's career."
In conjunction with the record's release, Nonesuch.com unveils a new mini-site featuring video interviews with Youssou and musicologist Lucy Duran, plus songs from the new album. Read excerpts from the interview transcript, in which Youssou reflects on the diversity of Senegal's many musical and cultural traditions, below.
To enter the mini-site, click here.
[About the album’s title, Rokka Mi Rokka (Give and Take):] “You give to me, I receive something, but I give you something”—this is a language coming from the north of Senegal [and the ethnic group to which Youssou belongs]. And it is also the way to describe the style of this album. We have a diversity of sound and rhythm in the same country, and I say to people, “I have the right and freedom to use all of these kinds of music.”
It’s funny, it’s crazy—Africans like Occidental sounds. They love keyboards, drums, they love all these modern instruments, and the rest of the world likes instruments that come from Africa … In [Western] music, you have this“one” [beat]. When you play music, the bass plays the one, and the kick drum plays the one. In mbalax music [represented on the album by the song “Bàjjan”], that doesn’t exist. We play around, behind the one. And if you are someone who doesn’t know Wolof or mbalax music, you get confused sometimes—you don’t know how to listen to the music or dance to the
music, to understand it.
[The song “Wake Up (It’s Africa Calling),” featuring singer Neneh Cherry,] means … Africa has something to say-not just war, poverty, or AIDS, but Africa wants to say something different, something positive. We want to move forward. I’m very happy with this song, and behind the song there is a big message: “Africa calling, Africa wake up.”
I think that if I were just to stay in one style, like mbalax music, I’m going to get tired a little bit! What keeps me passionate is this freedom to touch different kinds of music and … to bring to the world something really new. I’m happy to have this reputation, and at the same time it keeps me passionate about my music.
