Youssou N’Dour:  I Bring What I Love

A film by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Films about world music stars often have a too predictable feel about them.  They generally present a colorful mix of star-sanctioned biography, publicist-friendly praise and testimony, some down-home material for leavening, and a bang-up concert finale.  In the case of Youssou N’Dour, already the subject of at least 3 films, the bar is that much higher.  For all these reasons, I Bring What I Love is a standout, a film that genuinely teaches us new things about an iconic African artist, his music, and his world, and—I particularly love this part—a film that delivers surprises that the film maker could never have pre-calculated or even imagined in advance.

Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi followed N’Dour closely through Dakar, Cairo, Fes (Morocco), New York, and various European cities over something like three years to create this film.  It handles N’Dour’s historical biography succinctly, and comes to focus on the creation and problematic roll-out of his Grammy Award-winning 2004 release, Egypt.  N’Dour’s artful meditation on Islam has a more reflective mood and orchestral sound than his standard fare, and its music dominates the film.  N’Dour’s tried and true mbalax sound and his progressive rock/pop experiments mostly take a back seat.  But the story of Egypt turns out to be an unexpectedly riveting tale, largely because the Senegalese public, and Senegalese religious authorities, initially reject the music and the impulse behind it.

Youssou N’Dour is one of Africa’s most accomplished musicians, a man who understands media, business, the recording industry, the challenges of pleasing different factions of a multi-national audience—in short, he is master of a very complex game.  So it is most compelling to see him, in real time, faced with circumstances beyond his control and deeply threatening to his stature as an artist and public figure.  Vasarhelyi could not have hoped for such profound drama.  Better still—and I will give nothing away—is watching how N’Dour manages to turn this most prickly of predicaments around.  He proves his ingenuity and greatness before our eyes.