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Hey smartypants, here’s a teaser for you: what have Sonny Bono, Brazilian singer Gilberto Gil and the bloke from Runrig got in common? They’re all popstars turned politicians, of course. A recent addition to this strange club is Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, Senegal’s Minister for Culture and Tourism, and the subject of this rather fawning BBC4 documentary.
A forerunner of what became packaged in the ’80s as ‘world music’, N’Dour seems to be settling into his new role nicely. He wears a suit, a bland pair of specs and smiles very rarely during the course of this mostly subtitled and uncritical portrait. Though best known for his one crossover hit (‘Seven Seconds’ – recorded with Neneh Cherry, who’s interviewed here), the rest of his career is assumed to be common knowledge by the programme-makers, who make no real effort to engage with casual fans.
It’s a dangerous strategy, especially when combined with very loose objectivity. N'Dour’s given only softball questioning over his Murdoch-esque ownership of a TV station, a newspaper and a radio station, while his religion (the Mouride strand of Islam) is explained almost apologetically as being ‘a very tolerant form of Islam’. There’s an interesting story here, but this fails to tell it. Strictly for fans only.