Youssou N'Dour
The Best Of Youssou N'Dour

The Jewish doctor Ludwik Zamenhof must have already known, at the time of the publication of "Internacia Lingvo," his first volume dedicated to Esperanto, that his ambitious projects would be difficult to realize. It is the end of the nineteenth century, and in the complex scene of the Russian colonial empire, Zamenhof indulges in the luxury of "hoping" ("Doktoro Esperanto" was one of the pseudonyms he used to sign as an ophthalmologist) in the great project of an international language that could allow all Jews to exchange impressions without natural or territorial constraints. An ambitious project, laden with a hope that would be minimally rewarded in the decades to come: today, Esperanto remains largely a rare and secondary language in cases where it is spoken, but this does not deny that it is still alive and capable of shaking the dusty slab raised by the passage of time. Indeed, all in all, Zamenhof did everything he could. His problem, as a recent telecommunications advertisement might suggest, was fundamentally the lack of current means of communication. Many reading these words will certainly think of television, radio, the internet, and while they are indeed today's means of communication tout court, it is undeniable that for years now a great force of penetration into the collective is reserved for the most traditional and well-known of "persuasion" means, that medium which since ancient Greek times we have simply called "music."

Yes, music. The global message that Zamenhof would have expected to see transmitted from one side to the other could only happen through music, through a spoken language sweetened by melody, free from cloying and indigestible didactic volumes: music as a new key to Esperanto's penetration. Practically a century later, a Senegalese man slightly over thirty would bring to life the magnificent project of the Russian doctor, a young African native of Dakar who, thanks to collaborations with illustrious contemporary interpreters, would translate the universal language of music into harmony, a small great hero of our times known as Youssou N'Dour.

Our protagonist, after starting with exquisitely ethnic beginnings, was struck by the encounter with former Genesis member Peter Gabriel in 1986, when, having completed the delightful practice of that little masterpiece "Immigrés," he decided to rework the schemes of Senegalese "mbalax" through the modules of European musical tradition: the language of "World Music," already in its embryonic form in the hands of a chameleon-like Gabriel, becomes reality through the crystal-clear singing in his native language and English of Youssou, who, through "The Lion" in 1989, bears witness to the turning point of a world that finally wants to break down the barriers of incommunicability: the defragmentation of the Cold War ice is a symptom of this, the fall of the Wall is proof. People begin humming that catchy little tune of "The Lion," fall in love with the more indigenous meditations of "Macoy," and listen again with pleasure to the undulating melodies of "Shakin' The Tree": Esperanto is music, it is power in action. Above all and everyone, an intelligent use of English, a universal language in conversation as in music; this will be the mark that will distinguish Youssou from his great "comrade-in-arms" Khaled, a great interpreter of Algerian rai: the latter, despite producing a somewhat more mature musical product than the Senegalese, will be somewhat limited in certain circumstances by the use of the French language. The great boom of '89 sees its natural continuation in an even more convincing work, the caustic "Set" of 1990, where an annoyed Youssou, once again in English, addresses the Euro-American multinationals by denouncing:

"Rich countries make toxic waste
Why should they send it to me?
Poor countries know toxic waste
Why should they accept it?"

 

with the effect of raising awareness not only among Africans of the never overly known problems of the Third World.

The success of the little Senegalese from now on will grow year by year, work by work, from the famous duet with Neneh Cherry in "7 Seconds" in 1994 to the more commercial works of the second half of the '90s, from collaborations with Sting and Gabriel in "Joko" to the well-deserved recognitions of the American Grammy Award in 2005 thanks to the recent work of "Egypt."

Pay homage with a little listen, perhaps to this "The Best Of" containing the best of the trilogy "Immigrés-The Lion-Set," the great strength of a hero of our days, the small great performer of Ludwik Zamenhof's musical Esperanto.