YOUSSOU N'DOUR + RODRIGO Y GABRIELA - NATIONAL STADIUM - 16th Dec

Deaglan

a World Music double header...

YOUSSOU N'DOUR
& THE SUPER ETOILE DE DAKAR

+ very special guests

RODRIGO Y GABRIELA

National Stadium, South Circular Road

Monday 16th December. Doors 8pm

Tickets €32 including booking fee from Ticketmaster and usual outlets.

Ph: 1890 925 100. Buy online at www.ticketmaster.ie


National Stadium is the venue for what is set to be one of the shows of 2002 on Monday 16th December - a superb World Music Double header featuring legendary Senegalese singer/producer YOUSSOU N'DOUR & THE SUPER ETOILE DE DAKAR and Mexican guitar virtuosos RODRIGO Y GABRIELA. Often described as Africa's finest musician of all time; YOUSSOU N'DOUR appears as part of a worldwide tour to promote his universally-acclaimed new album 'Nothing's In Vain' and will be bringing THE SUPER ETOILE DE DAKAR to Ireland for the first time in almost two decades. His 13-piece band will feature some of the finest percussionists and vocalists in the trade for a deeply moving show.

The stir that RODRIGO Y GABRIELA have been stirring in Ireland of late was confirmed earlier this month with their sold-out show at Dublin's Olympia. Now embarking on a nationwide Irish tour, RODRIGO Y GABRIELA's excellent 'Re -Foc' album gets an international release in early 2003 on Nithin Sawhney's Outcaste label.

This is a fully-seated show in the refurbished National Stadium that will be remembered for many years to come.

YOUSSOU N'DOUR

Perhaps more than any other African Musician, Youssou N'Dour's name is synonymous with the concept of 'World Music'. Possessing a 45 octave voice, N¹dour is more than a singer and a local hero, he has become a global ambassador for African music.

"There's a spirit and soul in evidence here which have been hidden for far too long"
Irish Times. Nov 7th



N¹Dour is a singer endowed with remarkable range and poise, and, as a composer, bandleader and producer, with a prodigious musical intelligence. He absorbs the entire Senegalese musical spectrum in his work, often filtering this through the lens of genre-defying rock or pop music from outside Senegalese culture, always delivering memorable, personal performances both live in concert and on record. Dubbed a ³West African Sinatra² N¹Dour has made mbalax famous throughout the world in more than twenty years of recording and touring outside of Senegal with The Super Etoile de Dakar.

Having collaborated with Tracy Chapman, Sting, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder & Peter Gabriel all sing his praises. Gabriel with whom N¹Dour sang the classic ³IN YOUR EYES² from 1985 album SO, says N¹Dour is ³one of the best singers alive². A Spin reviewer has enthused that ³Youssou N¹Dour has more talent in his thumbnail than most so-called pop stars have in their entire being². The Guardian called N¹Dour¹s music ³the finest example yet of the meeting of African and Western music: wholesome, urgent and thoughtful². And Rolling Stone has judged N¹Dour¹s total package as an artist so promising as to declare that ³if any Third World performer has a real shot at the sort of universal popularity last enjoyed by Bob Marley it¹s Youssou, a singer with a voice so extraordinary that the history of Africa seems locked inside it².

N¹Dour has quietly but steadily captured the affection of a diverse, multi-ethnic, genuinely international audience, urging the delicious urban rhythms of mbalax beyond Senegal and beyond the territory of the ³world music² aficionados outside of Senegal who first were attracted to him.
N¹Dour¹s mbalax *( See Ed Note) has remained, deep down, the edgy, morally trenchant, profoundly personal music it is, now so much a part of the Senegalese national identity as to be inseparable from it. On the foundation of this personal sound, Youssou N¹Dour remains nothing less than a cultural icon in his country and in the Senegalese diaspora. Throughout his career, and after years of boisterous success in Africa, Europe and the Far East, N¹Dour¹s rootedness in Senegalese music and storytelling remains the bedrock of his artistic personality.


RODRIGO Y GABRIELA
Mexican guitar supremos Rodrigo y Gabriela traded their heavy-metal guitars for Spanish guitars in 1994, spurred on by a yearning to travel but hampered by the impracticalities of lugging electric guitars around. Metal-strings gave way to nylon and with this, the transition towards the style we know and admire had begun. . The pair travelled all round the continent playing their particular brand of Latin music and released their debut album Foc; the Catalan word for fire. This recording fuses Latin rhythms with flashes of jazz, rock, metal and funk, and is homage to the people and places they encountered on their travels. They have made a home for themselves in Dublin where they have been making waves for the last number of years, playing support slots to the likes of Damien Rice and Terry Callier, the Witnness Festival and sold-out headlining shows in the Olympia Theatre, Temple Bar Music Centre and numerous shows Nationwide.

They have also been pleasantly surprised by the demand that their album has created over the last few months, not least because it is an instrumental album but at the phenomenal interest they have gained in such a short space of time. It is the simplicity of their set-up, combined with the intricacy of their playing that has produced an act that can shift gracefully from cannon ball percussion to a lullaby in seconds. With two nylon-strung guitars and fever pitch playing, their style ranges from acoustic Techno, to avant-garde Jazz.

Note to Editor
Today¹s popular music in Senegal, known in the Wolof language as mbalax [³UMM-BAH-LAAKH²], developed at first as a mellow blend of the country¹s traditional griot percussion and praise-singing with the Afro-Cuban arrangements and flavors which made ³the return trip² from the Caribbean to West Africa in the 1950s and 1960s and have flourished in West Africa ever since.

Beginning in the mid-1970s the resulting mix was jauntily modernized with a gloss of more complex indigenous Senegalese dance rhythms, roomy and melodic guitar and saxophone solos, chattering talking-drum soliloquies and, on occasion, Sufi-inspired Muslim religious chant, creating a new music which was at turns nostalgic, restrained and stately or celebratory, explosively syncopated and indescribably funky.

Younger Senegalese musicians steeped in Hendrix, Santana and James Brown, and the whole range of American jazz, soul music and rock which the nightlife of Senegal¹s cosmopolitan capital, Dakar, had enthusiastically started to absorb, were rediscovering their Senegalese heritage and seeking out traditional performers, particularly singers and talking-drummers, to join their bands. (The griots - musicians, praise-singers and storyteller-historians - comprise a distinct hereditary caste in Wolof society.) As it emerged from this period of fruitful musical turbulence, mbalax would eventually find in Youssou N¹Dour, the performer who has had more to do with its shaping than any other individual, both its enduring symbol and its hardiest innovator.

oompa loompa

oooh, i'd love to go to that, but woah, 32e..
i will very much be at home drinking water and looking at the wall ..

DARN JOB-LESS-NESS!!!!
yea yea, i know, go get a job. i will.....

Keithaburke

I went to see the mexican guitar duet... They are very, very good.

She's beautiful, and really nice person. I was chatting to them...

Rod seemed a bit moody, but don't all musicians.

Are they a couple or just partners in music? I hear so many people asking that every time they're mentioned.

Keith