UNICEF People

Youssou N'Dour

© UNICEF/HQ00-0744/TOUTOUNJI

Senegalese performer and bandleader, Youssou N’Dour, has been called ‘the authentic and unforgettable voice of modern Africa.’ He became an important voice for children, too, with his appointment as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador on 3 April 1991.

N’Dour has long been active in social issues. He helped promote a 1987 immunization campaign in Senegal by immunizing a child himself. That same year, he attended the first symposium of the organization African Artists and Intellectuals for Child Survival and Development, set up by UNICEF, in his home city, Dakar. Here he performed in a major concert with UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Harry Belafonte. The following year he also performed in two large concerts at the organization’s second symposium in Harare, Zimbabwe, benefiting children in armed conflict.

Platform for change

N’Dour has worked for the cause of children at home and abroad -- in benefit performances, in his own tours and by taking part in information, communication and social mobilization campaigns. In August 1992, for instance, he performed in the UNICEF television special, the Danny Kaye International Children’s Awards show, and he has supported the Day of the African Child since it was established. He participated in an advocacy and fund-raising concert in Dakar in 1994, and supported the activities of UNICEF National Committees during his European tour of that year.

In February 2001, N’Dour launched UNICEF’s Global Movement for Children and the ‘Say Yes for Children’ campaign in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to an audience of 40,000 people and more than 1,000 media representatives. Since then his work for children has included visiting and publicizing a UNICEF-supported centre for delinquent children while in Lebanon for a concert in July 2002. In the concert, he dedicated his famous song ‘Seven Seconds’ to UNICEF.

© UNICEF/HQ93-0678/MERA

Youssou N'Dour performs at the UNICEF 'Day of the African Child' Gala held at United Nations Headquarters in New York, 1993.

Singing the history of Africa

N’Dour was born in Dakar in 1959 and first took to the stage at the age of 12. By his mid-teens, he was regularly singing with the most successful group in Senegal at that time, the Star Band. In 1979, he put together his own ensemble, the Étoile de Dakar, which by 1981 had evolved into the Super Étoile.

N’Dour has crafted a thoroughly modern African pop style, mbalax, which is culled from the elements of traditional Senegalese rhythms and international sounds. “Youssou is a singer with a voice so extraordinary that the history of Africa seems locked inside it,” Brian Cullman wrote in Rolling Stone.

Through the Joko project, the first initiative of his new non-profit foundation, the Youth Network for Development, N’Dour plans to use music and other arts as a link to develop a local African Internet culture in Senegal, in Africa as a whole and around the world.

N’Dour’s music reaches audiences that are unprecedented for an African performer. Along with this exposure comes a welcome responsibility: to speak out, often more effectively than is possible for a politician or professional campaigner, for mutual respect among peoples and for children’s rights to survival, protection and development.