Youssou N'Dour Quotes.
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.
Islam is a peaceful religion.
When the slaves left Africa, they left us this music. They left us blues.
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.
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.
Senegal needs a renaissance.
I have studied at the school of the world.
My music is like a spinning ball. It can turn in one direction, and then it comes back to origins.
Music is a language.
Islam has been badly used by a certain ideology.
I don’t really see myself as an actor.
I respect music, I do. I love it.
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!
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.
I love meeting interesting people and doing things with them.
Travel teaches as much as books.
My father used to tell me about how musicians don’t have respect from people and he was afraid about my future.
Senegal needs to free itself, to rediscover its democracy.
I don’t want to see that two-tier Senegal, that two-tier Africa, when you have those at the top and those at the bottom, people who are hungry, people who do not have enough to eat.
Africa is the future.
Music in Africa often contains messages. Music in Senegal, and Africa, is never music for music’s sake or solely for entertainment. It’s always a vehicle for social connections, discussions and ideas.
In politics, sometimes you have to lie, or you make a promise that you cannot keep.
I think that Sufism fits all over the world. The concept is not anything that fits standard Western ideas – it’s always related to culture, to music, to religion. It is a dominant religion in Senegal.
World music is about taking things from different places and bringing them together – which is great.
I have to protect my family and have a life with them that is completely private.
