Youssou N’Dour’s music crosses boundaries while remaining true to its roots. Fiona Shepherd talks to Africa’s most celebrated living musician

As a young boy, Youssou N’Dour would sing outside a Dakar club called Miami. He was still too young to gain entry but he was hustling for attention and inhaling the environment of the working musicians, anticipating his future recruitment to the club’s house Star Band. Years later, the man who grew up to be Senegal’s most esteemed singer and arguably the most celebrated living African musician, had earned enough money to buy his own club, Thiossane. As in his day, the hopeful kids converged on the street.

“Whenever I went to perform there I would look at the kids outside and saw myself in them,” says N’Dour, speaking through a translator from his offices in Dakar. “It reminded me of my early days and how things started for me.”

N’Dour was born into music, with an ancestral connection to the griot caste of storytellers on his mother’s side, as well as roots in the Serer sufi tradition, but as a teenager in the Star Band and with the breakaway Étoile de Dakar group he helped to popularise Senegal’s signature mbalax sound, a mix of traditional ceremonial music with urban dance styles which emerged following the country’s independence in 1960.

At home, he is a national hero and natural ambassador – he was the Minister of Tourism from 2012-13 – but he is still best known in the west for his biggest international hit, 7 Seconds, written and recorded with Neneh Cherry. Even a cursory listen to his soulful performance on that track explains his impressive ranking in Rolling Stone magazine’s 2023 list of Greatest Singers of All Time.

“I know that singing comes to people in very many different ways,” he says. “For me, singing comes from a great tradition in my family so I feel very honoured that my type of singing has been appreciated in this way by this accolade.”

N’Dour sings predominantly in his native Wolof tongue but his music has always demonstrated a fluidity of styles incorporating Cuban rhythms, West African guitar tunings and an armoury of percussion recorded with slick production values. Relocating for a time to Paris in the early Eighties, Étoile de Dakar got an upgrade to the 14-strong Super Étoile de Dakar and the seduction of western audiences was underway.

His Immigrés and Nelson Mandela albums fed interest in the newly minted “world music” category, his international profile soared via collaborations and tours with Peter Gabriel, a drumming cameo on Paul Simon’s Graceland album and his Wembley Stadium appearance on Amnesty International’s Human Rights Now tour, singing Bob Marley’s Get Up Stand Up alongside Bruce Springsteen, Sting and Tracy Chapman, and he achieved global stardom in the Nineties with 7 Seconds and its somewhat sanitised accompanying album The Guide (Wommat).

Back in Senegal, he was building a benevolent empire with his own recording studio, record label, radio station, newspaper, television station and network of internet cafes. Little wonder that his next move was into politics with a failed bid to stand for President in 2012 but the considerable consolation prize of the tourism portfolio, which he held for 18 months.

“It was my pride and joy to serve my country because of what this country has given me,” he reflects. “It made me who I am today. I can’t pay back even a percent of that. When I was called upon to serve in government I was excited and I also knew that it was a responsibility on my shoulders that I had to deliver based on my experience. Whenever the country calls, I’m always hoping to serve because for me that is a responsibility I cannot deny.”

For now though, N’Dour is re-immersed in music. He considers his latest album Mbalax not so much a return to roots – he never left them – more a celebration of an enduring tradition. “Mbalax has always been me,” he says. “I was born in it, grew up in it. I might go out and sing different forms of music but I’m always mbalax. That was the idea behind the album.

“I’m always going forwards and doing something new,” he continues, “but there are times when something that was done before can still be important today. Even though I’m still writing new music, every now and then I’ll revisit old songs. That’s why I love remixes, to make songs new so that people of this age can know how great these songs were. A song is not supposed to die. There’s a religious saying ‘to look like your ancestors is good, but it’s even better to look like your time’ so I hold to that fondly.”

To that end, N’Dour is a prolific collaborator with younger artists from the African diaspora, recording tracks with Kenyan band Sauti Sol, Swedish-Gambian singer Seinabo Sey and Congolese singer/songwriter Fally Ipupa among others. The one-time “little prince of Dakar” is now referred to as “Papa Youssou” by another African superstar, the Nigerian singer Burna Boy, after guesting on his track Level Up (Twice As Tall). Ever the diplomat, N’Dour declines to recommend any particular collaborator. “I don’t want to single out one artist because I want to encourage them all to be as good as they can be,” he says.

N’Dour’s career embodies this year’s EIF theme of Rituals That Unite Us. He is a Festival returnee, having previously enraptured an Usher Hall audience in 2016. He has yet to settle on his setlist for this year’s appearance, saying “the choice of songs for each concert is a tough choice because the repertoire is huge. It also depends on the environment of the festival or the concert and how much time I have to prepare. A concert for me is like a day when you have the morning, afternoon and evening. There are times when spirits are high and people want to dance and shout, there are times when people need to relax and reflect and just listen, so that’s how a concert goes for me.”

Youssou N’Dour plays the Usher Hall on 13 August. For more information, and to book tickets, visit www.eif.co.uk

Youssou N'Dour on returning to his roots at this year's EIF: 'A song is not supposed to die'