Youssou N'Dour - Vol. 8: Immigrés / Bitim Rew (1984)

I always welcome the chance to listen to an album by someone I've never heard of. I don't even know how I'm supposed to pronounce the man's name, or the name of his album. Kicking off with the title track, "Immigrés /Bitim Rew" is a light rhythmic funk-reggae piece. I say light because the beat seems so happy, and the instrumentation is understated, featuring nylon-stringed guitars and saxophones. The drumming is quite busy, with a standard kit practically drowned out by bongos, congas, or rather their closest traditional African equivalent. It does feel like a happy maybe slightly nostalgic song. I do tend to caution myself against thinking that, because for all I know it's a song about greed and jealousy or something. I don't speak the same language as Youssou N'Dour, whatever that is. I'll have to look it up later. The first song ends really abruptly, almost mid measure, which is quite jarring.

The album has only 4 songs in spite of it's 34-minute length. I don't mind long songs so long as they don't just repeat themselves a million times. The title track was OK in that sense. I felt it had several different if not entirely unique passages. "Pitchi Mi" is a lovely bluesey-jazz number- well sung and expertly played- that I feel goes on a bit too long without much happening. Same with the next song "Taaw". The closing track "Badou" is nice and short, though it does feel sorta like a generic marimba track that might play in the background of a cheesy 80s movie when the characters visit a tropical island.

So I looked it up and learned Youssou N'Dour is from Senegal. So maybe calling the first song reggae isn't correct and maybe racist on my part. But reggae refers to a certain song structure I felt "Immigrés / Bitim Rew" certainly has. The album has been criticized for using synthesizers, and often I find myself on that bandwagon. In this case I feel the synths were used pretty tastefully to flavor the classic instrumentation and not to overpower it.

The album isn't really my style, but it's certainly not bad. 2 stars.