Youssou N'Dour quotes

Youssou N'Dour is a renowned Senegalese musician, singer, and composer celebrated for his powerful voice and innovative fusion of traditional and contemporary styles. His music blends mbalax rhythms with international pop, earning him global recognition and influence. He has also played an important role as a cultural ambassador and activist for Africa. Here are 30 of his quotes:

I love meeting interesting people and doing things with them.

Youssou N'Dour

Travel teaches as much as books.

Youssou N'Dour

World music is about taking things from different places and bringing them together - which is great.

Youssou N'Dour

Islam has been badly used by a certain ideology.

Youssou N'Dour

I grew up with reggae music.

Youssou N'Dour

Music in Africa often contains messages. Music in Senegal, and Africa, is never music for music's sake or solely for entertainment. It's always a vehicle for social connections, discussions and ideas.

Youssou N'Dour

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.

Youssou N'Dour

Africa is the future.

Youssou N'Dour

I want to use my music to deliver a political message and sometimes to denounce, but I don't want to be a politician.

Youssou N'Dour

I'm a modern Muslim. I pray, and if I have a question, I ask someone who is more educated in the religion than me.

Youssou N'Dour

Senegal needs a renaissance.

Youssou N'Dour

I don't really see myself as an actor.

Youssou N'Dour

When the slaves left Africa, they left us this music. They left us blues.

Youssou N'Dour

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.

Youssou N'Dour

My music is like a spinning ball. It can turn in one direction, and then it comes back to origins.

Youssou N'Dour

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.

Youssou N'Dour

I have studied at the school of the world.

Youssou N'Dour

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.

Youssou N'Dour

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!

Youssou N'Dour

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.

Youssou N'Dour

I have to protect my family and have a life with them that is completely private.

Youssou N'Dour

I can assure you that I have never used my media companies for propaganda, and I will never do so.

Youssou N'Dour