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Eyes Open (Youssou N'Dour album)
1992 studio album by Youssou N'Dour From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Eyes Open is an album by the Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour, released in 1992 via Spike Lee's 40 Acres and a Mule Musicworks label.[2][3][4] A video was shot for "Africa Remembers".[5] N'Dour supported the album with a North American tour.[6] Eyes Open was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best World Music Album".[7]
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Production
Recorded at N'Dour's studio in Dakar, Senegal, the album was produced by the musician.[5][8] The majority of the songs were sung in Wolof.[9] N'Dour contributed liner notes that described the references in his songs.[10] "Hope" is a paean to N'Dour's grandmother.[11] "Country Boy" is about leaving rural life for an urban existence.[12] Assane Thiam contributed on talking drum.[13]
Critical reception
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Newsday deemed the album "an annoying yet informative dispatch, a disappointing example of the new cultural multinationalism hovering on the upmarket fringes of so-called world music (so-called, because the marketing term smacks of a western ethnocentrism that assumes we are not the world)."[19] Stereo Review wrote that "N'Dour continues to pump out a propulsive sound that's dazzling in its rich combination of rhythms and irresistible in its melodic urgency."[20] The Christian Science Monitor noted that "N'Dour continues to temper his artful confabulation of African sensibility and American funk."[21]
The Calgary Herald determined that "his band's lopingly propulsive rhythms will remind newcomers to soukous more of reggae's hypnotic sway than rock's straight-ahead rush."[14] Trouser Press stated that "the percussion is downplayed in favor of swooping fretless bass and rock-influenced guitars."[22] Robert Christgau opined that the "mbalax commitments mitigate any conceptual link to studio-rock."[15]
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Track listing
References
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