"Shukran Bamba"

A single listen to Youssou N'Dour's latest release leaves little doubt that it is one of the most important African recordings in years. Senegal's top pop musician has built a career on appropriating musical waves from the West--salsa, reggae, funk, and rock--and artfully working them into his quintessentially African mix. Here, N'Dour turns his ear eastward and northward to seek common ground between his West African musical sensibility and the musical heartland of Arab Africa, Egypt. The musical journey has a historical and philosophical parallel that makes this venture still more compelling. The varieties of Islam that thrive in Senegal are part of another great wave, Tijaniyya, a family of Sufi "ways" that began in Fes, Morocco, in the 18th century. Insisting that Islam is a religion of beauty and tolerance, N'Dour makes a passionate musical and spiritual argument within these eight songs, and along the way, he provides an elaborate and little understood history lesson, tracing the outlines of Islam's remarkable adaptation to the realities of West Africa.

The opener, "Allah," begins with a deep, breathy kawala flute answering a simple kora melody, then a swell of strings with N'Dour chanting the name of God--"Allah, Allah." Just when you fear we're in for a gush of religious goo, the sound opens into a plucked string ostinato, and N'Dour doubles the kora in the song's memorable hook--yes, a pop hook of the sort that has made N'Dour the greatest hit-maker in West Africa. For all this project's high purpose, it is in the end, an inviting and friendly pop album. As N'Dour's voice intensifies, a more convincing spiritual force builds. The song's lyrics welcome a new child into the world, crediting God's grace of nine months, and naming Senegalese saints and sages, the sorts of African Islamic personalities who spirit all the pieces on this album.

The masterful orchestration and arranging that graces this nearly flawless album comes from Egyptian maestro Fathy Salama, a self-described "renegade" on the Cairo scene. Creator of some 2000 popular songs during the 1980s, Salama moved away from the city's predictable formulas with his group Sharkiat, embracing both new technology and Arabic music roots at the same time. Filling out N'Dour's melodic ideas with orchestral backing could easily have produced a banal and contrived sound that would have made nonsense of N'Dour's spiritual mission. But song after song, Salama comes through with originality and sensitivity so that nothing feels forced or out of place.

Perhaps the album's tour de force, "Shukran Bamba" rides a meandering kawala melody over rolling, Arab percussion. N'Dour enters singing about the giant of Senegalese Islam, Cheikh Amadou Bamba (1855-1927), sounding supremely comfortable in a foreign idiom, especially when he doubles the crisp, moody string section on the song's minor-key refrain. The piece builds to an a-rhythmic, swirling zone with N'Dour's voice climbing to its trademark, ecstatic wail. When the orchestra joins him as he swoons down to deep, slow notes, the spirit of Umm Kulthum--whom N'Dour says he adored as a boy--hovers nearby.

"Tijaniyya" works with a characteristic 12/8 feel reminiscent of music from the Persian Gulf, but tinged with Africanisms--balafon and Senegalese percussion. "Mahdiyu Laye" is a lush, swooning, orchestral ballad, in which N'Dour sings with sage-like clarity about Seydina Limanou Laye (1843-1909), a Senegalese messiah or al-Mahdi. "Cheikh Ibra Fall" celebrates the founder of the ascetic Baye Fall movement--whose adherents N'Dour has described as "Senegalese Rastas." This song most strongly incorporates the animated polyrhythms of Senegal's familiar mbalax pop genre. But initially, those sabar rhythms are played not on drums, but on oud and bowed strings. "Touba--Daru Salaam" moves between arrhythmic, devotional passages, and a sly, slinky groove that marries a belly-dance groove with sultry Wolof vocals from N'Dour and his backing chorus.

Based on the music alone, Egypt is a masterpiece. When it was released in Senegal, the album caused a stir, with some loudly complaining about a popular musician making money off religion. Given the common invocation of Allah in West and North African pop--not to mention the continent's present proliferation of Christian gospel music--the criticism seems hard to defend. Still, there is no doubt N'Dour had hesitations about putting his spiritual life forward in this way. The session was recorded in 1999, and is being released only now. N'Dour's claim that he intended it as a "personal" project is hard to reconcile with the elaborate effort involved in recording an orchestra in Cairo. No doubt, 9/11 had something to do with the delay.

Whatever philosophical fires Egypt may stir in West Africa, it comes as welcome balm to the larger, spiritually ravaged world. These elaborately conceived, culturally complex, and musically brilliant pieces argue powerfully that Islam is a religion of openness and beauty. The music speaks for itself.

To discuss Youssou and Fathy's new CD Egypt, link here.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre