Posts Tagged ‘Youssou N’Dour’

Anyone who’s spent even a small amount of time on the African continent has a good idea of what people mean when they use the phrase “African nostalgia.”  Even if you haven’t traveled there, it’s easy to get a back-to-our-roots sense from the culture, art, music, and design available to us in the US.  Everything from HBO’s “No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” to Youssou Ndour’s documentary I Bring What I Love shows this simple side of life, but not in a melancholy way.  Instead, we see this beautiful, rhythmic, traditional lifestyle in which tribal differences are as often respected as they are fought over.  A primary part of what we know, culturally, about the continent is the music of Angelique Kidjo – a singer who hails from Benin and whose voice sooths as it entices.

With formal jazz music training from the CIM in Paris, Kidjo performed last March at USC’s Bovard Auditorium and has worked with some of music’s greatest performers including Carlos Santana, Ziggy Marley, and Peter Garbiel on her recent album Djin Djin.  Her music will, we have no doubt, be of the strength and soul that it will fill the Walt Disney Concert Hall on Sunday evening (February 28) during her solo performance.  To make sure that we’re all on the same page with this brand of “African nostalgia,” we’re giving away tickets for Kidjo’s Sunday evening performance!

This is, indeed, an Extra! Extra! giveaway – a reluctant one, since we wanted to keep this tickets for our greedy little selves.  Just keep in mind that by entering into this giveaway, you’re automatically entered into the next three we agree to giveaway.  All we need is your first name, last name, and your email address and voila – you’ll feel like you’re picking through markets in Dakar in no time.

(Click here if the nostalgia is all too much and you’d rather buy your own tickets.)

Youssou N’Dour has a life, career, and musical style representative of much of Western Africa, specifically Senegal.  He is inarguably the most famous singer in that region of the world and as a result of where he’s from and who his fans are, his music carries a stronger message and often calls his listeners to act.  He helped create Senegal’s most popular national style of music, called “mbalax,” which is rhythmic dance music that draws inspiration from hip hop, jazz, Latin music, and the traditional drumming of Senegal: “sabar.” 

Youssou N’Dour is, for lack of a better phrase, the musical heart of Western Africa.  A self-described “modern griot,” meaning poet or wandering musician, N’Dour has collaborated with the likes of Paul Simon, Sting, Peter Gabriel, and Bruce Springstein and perhaps more importantly, N’Dour has been an active participant in a great many humanitarian causes like the “Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur,” and IntraHealth International.  In I Bring What I Love, filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi chronicles the production, release, and consequences of N’Dour’s 2004 album Egypt.   The controversial album was a collaborative effort between N’Dour and the Egyptian Fathy Salama Orchestra and explores Islam as it is practiced in Senegal and Egypt.  His lyrics offer a hopeful, tolerant view of Islam, but were received with criticism from Muslims who felt that it was blasphemous to dilute the religion by melding it with pop culture. 

In I Bring What I Love, opening tomorrow at Laemmle’s Sunset 5 theatre, audiences are able to see the hopeful message N’Dour had intended with Egypt and how it all came to be.  The work on that album was intended to send a particular message to a world in which the Muslim religion is so often inaccurately associated with fear and terror.  He was trying to send the message that in his country and in his experience, Islam is a beautiful, tolerant, enjoyable religion.  

I Bring What I Love is playing from July 3 at the Laemmle Sunset 5 theatre.  For more information or to buy tickets, please call (323) 848-3500 or click here.