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Joko (The Link)
(Nonesuch)

This isn't the strongest and most ingratiating U.S. release from N'Dour in years because he finally subsumes the Euro-Afro fusion that's his stock-in-trade for non-Senegalese listeners. It's because, for once, he yokes the synths, the glossy production and the pro forma Peter Gabriel cameo to a mbalax undercarriage that hasn't sounded as natural or as inevitable since he rode the style to Paris and i nternational stardom two decades ago. Even the least rhythmically adventurous tracks here --the lovely "Birima," the exhortative "Red Clay"--bespeak a cultural specificity as genuine and as lived as "Trouble No More" or "A Change Is Gonna Come." In short, he crosses over without crossing over. And he comes damn close to convincing me that maybe there is such a thing as world music after all.

Rating: 8

Rob Brookman

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