Reggae via Senegal, and a Tough Utopia
By Nate Chinen
Youssou N’Dour

From time to time this Senegalese vocal supernova reaches beyond mbalax, his native musical language, to explore some other strain of global pop or folk. “Dakar-Kingston” (Emarcy) is his reggae album. More specifically, if unofficially, it’s his tribute to Bob Marley, another singer of deep regional affiliation and sociopolitical urges. Most of the polished arrangements are by Tyrone Downie, formerly of Bob Marley and the Wailers, and the opener is a secular devotional called “Marley.” (Yusuf Islam, the former Cat Stevens, helped write the song, though its lyrics — “He never intended to go away/Before he did, he had a lot to say”— hardly suggest the poetic fluency of a native English speaker.) The album is worth hearing because Mr. N’Dour is never less than a compelling presence, and because a few tracks, like “Medina” and “Survie,” play to his mercurial strengths. On the whole it’s too earthbound for him, too wedded to reggae’s rhythm logic. That probably won’t be a problem when he takes this music to the stage, as he will at Terminal 5 on June 24 (terminal5nyc.com).