Youssou N'Dour Quotes
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World music is about taking things from different places and bringing them together - which is great.
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Music is a language.
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My music is like a spinning ball. It can turn in one direction, and then it comes back to origins.
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When I'm in Senegal, I can't just sit in isolation making music. People need my help. And the Senegalese people helped create my music. It comes from the country itself.
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Africa is the future.
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Listen, a lot of religions have fundamentalists.
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I look at my people, and I look at those who control them - the political elite. And the sad thing is that the elites are just not interested in the welfare of the people.
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When the slaves left Africa, they left us this music. They left us blues.
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I love meeting interesting people and doing things with them.
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I can assure you that I have never used my media companies for propaganda, and I will never do so.
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The question of modernization is central to disturbances in the Middle East and in Africa. Everyone is after modernization, no matter where they come from. But you have to be careful about it, and more importantly, you have to have sense about it.
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Travel teaches as much as books.
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In the West, you have always associated the Islamic faith 100 percent with Arab culture. This in itself is a fundamentalist attitude and it is mistaken.
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I have to protect my family and have a life with them that is completely private.
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I think people should know more of Africa in terms of its joie de vivre, its feeling for life. In spite of the images that one knows about Africa - the economic poverty, the corruption - there's a joy to living and a happiness in community, living together, in community life, which may be missing here in America.
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I don't really see myself as an actor.
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I grew up with reggae music.
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Western record companies haven't always dealt with African musicians in the best way. Giving them a lot of money and telling them they're going to be bigger than Phil Collins is the wrong way to do it!
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I have studied at the school of the world.
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I'm a modern Muslim. I pray, and if I have a question, I ask someone who is more educated in the religion than me.
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If you come from Africa with your economic poverty and your cultural riches, and you meet someone like Peter Gabriel or a person from a big record company, and they tell you that what you are doing is marvelous, that makes you feel powerful.
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Senegal needs to free itself, to rediscover its democracy.
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In politics, sometimes you have to lie, or you make a promise that you cannot keep.
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I respect music, I do. I love it.