Youssou N’Dour Biography, Net Worth, Music Career and Political Career
Full Name: Youssou Madjiguène Ndour
Stage Name: Youssou N’Dour
Occupation: Singer,Songwriter,Musician,Composer, Businessman and Politician
Age: 64
Date of Birth: October 1, 1959
Place of Birth: Dakar, Senegal
Gender: Male
Nationality: Senegalese
Marital Status: Married (Aida Coulibaly)
Children: Venus N’Dour, Birane N’Dour, St. Louis N’Dour, Ndeye Sokhna N’Dour, Ibrahima Nelson Mandela N’Dour,Segui N’Dour, Thioro N’Dour, Mary Aida Coulibaly N’Dour
Youssou N’Dour is a Senegalese singer, songwriter, musician, composer, businessman, and politician. Born October 1, 1959, he is also known as Youssou Madjiguène Ndour. Rolling Stone called him “perhaps the most famous singer alive” in Senegal and much of Africa in 2004.
The same magazine put him at number 69 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time in 2023. From April 2012 to September 2013, he was in charge of tourism in Senegal.
N’Dour helped create a famous style of Senegalese music called mbalax, which is known to all Senegalese languages, including Wolof. This style has sacred roots in the Serer music njuup tradition and ndut initiation ceremonies. Two award-winning movies, Return to Gorée (2007) by Pierre-Yves Borgeaud and Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love (2008) by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, are about him. Both movies were shown all over the world.
N’Dour was cast as Olaudah Equiano in the movie Amazing Grace in 2006.
Early life
N’Dour is Serer by race because he was born to a Serer father and a Toucouleur mother.N’Dour is Wolof, though, which is his culture.Dakar is where he was born. He started performing when he was 12 years old and went on to be a regular member of Dakar’s most famous band in the 1970s, the Star Band.
Even though N’Dour’s mother was from the traditional griot caste, he did not learn that practice from his mother. Instead, he learned it from his sibling. Even though he came from a noble family, N’Dour’s parents pushed him to have a modern view of the world. This made him open to two cultures and helped him become a modern griot. He used Islamic music and chants a lot in his work because he was a Mouride disciple (taalibé in Wolof) and a Muslim of the Mouride brotherhood, which is one of the four main Sufi groups in Senegambia.
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Music Career
Tossou N’Dour joined Super Diamono when he was 15 years old, and in 1975, he went on tour with the band in West Africa.
N’Dour got a deal to sing with Ibra Kasse’s Star Band at Kasse’s Miami club in Dakar when he was sixteen years old. That’s where he became famous.
In 1978, N’Dour joined other members of the Star Band in leaving to form Étoile de Dakar. This band made important contributions to Senegal’s new musical style, mbalax, which mixed traditional Senegalese music with the Latin styles that had been popular in Senegal at the time.
The band had problems within, so they didn’t last long after quickly becoming one of the most popular in the city. Étoile de Dakar was split into two groups, Super Étoile de Dakar and Étoile 2000. N’Dour, guitarist Jimi Mbaye, bassist Habib Faye, and tama (talking drum) player Assane Thiam were all in the second group. In just a few months, Super Étoile de Dakar put out four cassette albums and finally became N’Dour’s rock band.
By 1991, he had his own recording studio.
In 1995, he had his own record label called Jololi.
N’Dour is one of the most famous African singers ever. He has millions of fans all over the world because he mixes traditional Senegalese mbalax with hip hop, jazz, and soul, as well as Cuban rumba. In the West, N’Dour has worked with Bruce Springsteen, Dido, Lou Reed, Alan Stivell, Bran Van 3000, Neneh Cherry, Wyclef Jean, Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, Axelle Red, Sting, Alan Stivell, Bran Van 3000, Neneh Cherry, Wyclef Jean, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Chapman, James Newton Howard, Branford Marsalis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Dido, Bruce Cockburn, and others.
His voice was called a “arresting tenor, a flexible weapon wielded with prophetic authority” by the New York Times.
N’Dour’s music mixed all kinds of Senegalese music styles, often through the lens of rock or pop music from other cultures that didn’t fit into any particular category.
N’Dour’s Africa Opera had its world premiere at the Opéra Garnier in July 1993 as part of the French Festival Paris quartier d’été.
A duet with Neneh Cherry called “7 Seconds” was N’Dour’s biggest international hit song, which came out in 1994.
“La Cour des Grands (Do You Mind If I Play),” the official song of the 1998 FIFA World Cup, was written and sung by him and Axelle Red.
He was called the African Artist of the Century by Folk Roots magazine. He went on tours around the world for thirty years. In 2005, his album Egypt won him his first American Grammy Award for best contemporary world music record.
He owns the radio station RFM (Radio Future Medias), the TV channel TFM, and the newspaper L’Observateur, which has one of the largest circulations in Senegal.
With the idea of “Languages and transcultural forms of expression” that year, N’Dour was given the Prince Claus Award in 2002.
In the 2006 movie Amazing Grace, N’Dour played the African-British abolitionist Olaudah Equiano. The movie was about William Wilberforce’s work to end slavery in the British Empire.
In 2008, N’Dour offered the French singer Cynthia Brown one of his songs, called Bébé.
N’Dour was given an honorary doctorate in music from Yale University in 2011.
N’Dour won a share of Sweden’s $150,000 Polar music prize in 2013 for both his music and his work to bring people of different faiths together.
Net Worth
As of 2022, Forbes says that Youssou N’Dour is the richest African singer in the world, with a net worth of $145 million. The Senegalese artist N’Dour is best known for his music. He also writes songs, acts sometimes, runs a business, and runs for office.
Political Career
He said at the start of 2012 that he was going to run for president of Senegal against President Abdoulaye Wade. He was not allowed to run in the election, though, because the signatures he got to support his bid were not real.Macky Sall, the candidate of the opposition, beat Wade in a second round of votes in March 2012. N’Dour backed Sall. In April 2012,
N’Dour was made Minister of Culture and Tourism as part of the cabinet of Abdoul Mbaye, who became Prime Minister. The story of N’Dour’s run for president was filmed for the PBS show Sound Tracks: Music Without Borders. After a while, his job changed, and he was made Minister of Tourism and Leisure. On September 2, 2013, when a new government led by Prime Minister Aminata Touré took office.
He was fired from that job. N’Dour was instead made a minister and given the job of Special Adviser to the President, whose job it was to promote the country abroad.
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