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Introduction
Under the ornate arches of the Bab El Makina on a balmy June night in Fes, Youssou N'Dour, dressed in a pristine white damask boubou, bows in appreciation of the standing ovation and thunderous applause he has just received from an audience of some 5,000 people at the World Sacred Music Festival. 'Aujourd'hui je suis libéré' ('Today I am liberated'), he tells a Moroccan journalist just a few minutes after the concert is over, explaining that his live performance had been something of a test for his experimental musical endeavour (Ezzakhrajy 2004). In November of 2003 during the holy month of Ramadan the Senegalese superstar released a new album under his Xippi label in Dakar entitled Sant Yàlla meaning 'praise God' in Wolof, Senegal's lingua franca and N'Dour's native tongue. The accompanying musical videos were shown for a brief period on Senegalese television but were abruptly pulled after a religious leader, in a bid for authority, protested their airing and threatened the singer with sanctions.2 Several months later, even pirated copies of those videos could not be found anywhere in Dakar's markets, a testament to the political power of Senegal's religious elite. The album was subsequently released on the international market under the name Egypt by Nonesuch Records in June 2004, a little more than a week after the singer had performed the ensemble of pieces on the album at the festival in Morocco, and it went on to win the 2005 Grammy Award for best contemporary world music album. On the front of the album cover the name Egypt, in small red letters, is dwarfed by a much larger gold 'Allah' in Arabic script on a white background, while on the back, a damask and embroidery clad N'Dour, eyes reverently closed and arms outstretched, strikes a Sufi pose evoking a whirling dervish from Konya, the spiritual centre of Turkish Sufism.
Sant Yàlla/Egypt is, in musical terms, strikingly different from N'Dour's other albums, most of which feature the distinctive mbàllax dance rhythm that has become synonymous with his unique style since the early 1980s. In this album, however, N'Dour and his entourage of Senegalese musicians, including kora player Babou Laye and several...