Youssou N'Dour

Youssou N'Dour may have come attention to Europe and America when he contributed backing vocals to Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes", but he'd been performing and recording in his native Senegal for some time.

Youssou was born in Medina in Dakar, Senegal, started his music career singing in small clubs in Dakar in his local dialect wollof language which is predominantly spoke in Senegal and Gambia. He's most popular for his mbalax beat which gave him the title "Roi de Mbalax" (King of Mbalax), and is a household name in Senegal, Gambia and neighbour countries in West Africa with a long list of hits from the early days in the 70s to date.

A renowned singer, songwriter, and composer, Youssou's mix of traditional Senegalese mbalax with eclectic influences ranging from Cuban samba to hip hop, jazz, and soul has won him an international fan base of millions.

He is endowed with remarkable range and poise, a composer, bandleader, and producer with a prodigious musical intelligence. The New York Times most recently described his voice as an "arresting tenor, a supple weapon deployed with prophetic authority". N'Dour absorbs the entire Senegalese musical spectrum in his work, often filtering this through the lens of genre-defying rock or pop music from outside Senegalese culture.

There is more than just an artist to youssou, his magestic and mythic musical talent, his voice and the words that flip through his lips, define more than what the world has known of this artist. The music he has been playing for more than two decades now is like a monument, strong that exist in each person's heart, a monument that will never be removed, neither by war nor massive destruction. Artists like N'dour, have proven to the world how much, music can change our lives, change the way we live, eat and see things. I see his music as the horizon of our imagination, because every beat he plays goes beyond our joy, sensation and feeling.