Youssou

 

2023 Charity Shop Purchases #72 - Youssou N'Dour - The Best Of

I'm pretty sure than in his Kensington mansion Ernie has an entire wing exclusively reserved to house African music. Me, I've probably got about a dozen of so CDs and LPs. However, I now have two from Senegal. I suspect that when he gets to Senegal in his African Odyssey that Ernie will concentrate on lesser known artists given that Youssou N'Dour has been described in Rolling Stone as perhaps the most famous singer alive in Senegal and much of Africa.

This album is from 1994 on Virgin. Given that Mr N'Dour has been recording since at least 1982 Mr Branson may well be getting a visit from Trading Standards.

More accurately it should be described as The Best of Three Albums from 1984 to 1990 given that all the tracks come from Immigrés (1984), The Lion (1989) and Set (1990). So no Seven Seconds his duo with Neneh Cherry which came slightly later in 1994.  It is still very good particularly as I only paid 25p for it.

One from each of the three I think.

From Immigrés  let's go for all 7 minutes of Immigrés/Bitim Rew. An album which NME ranked as the 18th best of 1984.

The Lion which involved production by Peter Gabriel was the one which shot him to international prominence. I suspect that a number of you will be familiar with Shakin' the Tree.

Set was made with his band Étoile de Dakar I'm going for Sinebar of which The Boston Globe wrote it possesses "one of the catchiest, most exhilarating horn riffs in pop music this or any year

Youssou N'Dour -Immigres/Bitim Rew

Youssou N'Dour - Shakin' the Tree

Youssou N'Dour - Sinebar