Etoile de Dakar featuring Youssou N'Dour: Once Upon a Time in Senegal

This is the second outstanding Youssou N'Dour album released this year. First came I Bring What I Love, with its live reworking of songs from across his career. Now follows this two-CD set chronicling "the Birth of Mbalax 1979-81" and the history of the band that launched N'Dour's career, before he left with other musicians to form Super Etoile. In the Etoile era, Senegalese music was in transition, and the songs here include echoes of lilting African-Cuban fusions made famous earlier by Orchestra Baobab, along with bursts of western-influenced psychedelia (listen to the wailing guitar work on Tolou Badou Ndiaye), and of course the new driving Mbalax style, with its emphasis on the tama talking drum. The young N'Dour was just one of the lead vocalists and songwriters with this band, and can be heard performing alongside El Hadji Faye and the late Eric M'Backe N'Doye, two sturdy singers who would never match his success. N'Dour was already in a league of his own, as shown by his thrilling, declamatory performances on M'Badane, or the intense and commanding Sama Guenth-Gui. It's an impressive compilation that's helped by the remastering of the original recordings, and by well-researched sleeve notes.