Words matter. These are the best Youssou N’Dour Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
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.
I don’t really see myself as an actor.
I love meeting interesting people and doing things with them.
I really want to bring the message of love that is Islam to people; bring something new to that familiar face.
The question of modernization is central to disturbances in the Middle East and in Africa. Everyone is after modernization, no matter where they come from. But you have to be careful about it, and more importantly, you have to have sense about it.
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.
My father used to tell me about how musicians don’t have respect from people and he was afraid about my future.
In politics, sometimes you have to lie, or you make a promise that you cannot keep.
Music is a language.
Politics is politics; art is art. If you play a political role, you have to stop being an artist.
Islam has been badly used by a certain ideology.
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!
When the slaves left Africa, they left us this music. They left us blues.
Travel teaches as much as books.
Islam is a peaceful religion.
I want to use my music to deliver a political message and sometimes to denounce, but I don’t want to be a politician.
Africa is the future.
I have studied at the school of the world.
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.
I can assure you that I have never used my media companies for propaganda, and I will never do so.
Listen, a lot of religions have fundamentalists.
My music is like a spinning ball. It can turn in one direction, and then it comes back to origins.
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 to free itself, to rediscover its democracy.
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.
