Senegal's singing superstar Youssou N'Dour was already heading for the big time while still in his teens. In the late 1970s, performing with the original Super Diamano and the Star Band, his rich, soaring voice was one of the best-known sounds in late-night downtown Dakar. By 1983 he owned a night-club of his own - somewhere to perform six nights a week with his band, Super Etoile de Dakar. Throughout the 1980s they came to dominate Senegalese music and later N'Dour himself became one of the biggest African stars of what they had started to call world music.
Born in 1959, N'Dour is a gawlo, or a singing griot, on his mother's side. Just like the other famous families of Seck, Diabate and Kouyate, N'Dour found himself with a clearly defined role in Senegalese society. The griots are the bards of the country and, although many nowadays devote their energies to journalism, broadcasting and politics, N'Dour chose the more traditional griot path of music and song. "I think in the past the griots were involved with the story of what happens," he says. "They helped people and they made people happy. The idea of the griot today means a lot for the old people but for the younger people not quite as much. I think to be a griot means that you do your music and support a lot of justice things. I think music is power and it's something we can use to support a lot of things. And I'm happy to help with my music. Music can bring a message for our society."
N'Dour's impact on the African music scene was quite phenomenal. The new style of music he had been developing since the late 1970s was termed mbalax - a Wolof word for a particular drum rhythm. That new music was a mix of the traditional and the modern, with N'Dour importing elements of jazz to complement the old-style chanting and freeform singing techniques. Some of the old familiar Cuban sounds remained, too, but by and large this was a revolutionary music - performed not in French, but in Wolof.
"For people listening outside Africa, language is less important. People feel our music from the rhythm and the motion we try to bring. But I think keeping our language is important. I think we are best with our own language.
"It all began in the 1970s when my generation started to play something close to our tradition. Things had started to change but so soon after independence, people were still close to the French influence and the Latin music. And there was still Cuban music in what we did because the Cuban thing was part of our music. When we listen to Cuban music we feel part of the story of when the slaves left Africa. And when we get music back from Cuba we feel part of that.
"Of course, a lot of people were criticising what we were doing. And that criticism was at two levels - the rich people and the intellectuals. They would say that this was not music, this was just folklore. They were not open to us."
In 1983, N'Dour left Senegal for Paris and a song called Immigres brought him to a much wider audience for the first time. In particular he was championed by Peter Gabriel, with whom he recorded on Gabriel's album, So. This led to further collaborations and serious global exposure on the 1988 Amnesty International Tour where he performed alongside Gabriel, Sting and Springsteen. By now, N'Dour was recognised by all who heard him as a truly great singer - and potentially a major pop star. That move to Paris had changed everything for N'Dour, and the music would have to change too.
"When I came to Paris I just listened to the radio and felt the vibe. Then when people started coming to my concerts I saw they were really surprised. They didn't know what I was doing. So I simplified things a little bit to get people to understand what I was doing. It was all natural for me because I was going and coming back and forwards to Paris and Africa all the time. I was happy to change my music a little."
In 1989 he recorded his first album for Virgin Records. Titled The Lion, it didn't go down too well at home and N'Dour began to get a certain amount of stick from several directions. It was a record aimed at a European pop audience and was perhaps the inevitable consequence of the "world music" approach to anything previously unmarketable outside its own home base. Certainly N'Dour was eager to incorporate elements of what he was finding in Europe and the US, but the high-tech results weren't a patch on the original recordings, only available on cassette back in Dakar. Nobody much was happy with the results and there were those at home who began to grumble loudly.
N'Dour may have been attracted by the technology, the sounds and the presentation of western music but, for many, he had gone too far.
"I had that problem." he says, "A lot of people think that music doesn't move. Like Ireland, Africa has two different musics - one is really traditional and we can keep it traditional. I think that's important because it makes us feel closer to our culture. But then there is the other which is the modern thing which tries to put things together. And I think people for this century, for the year 2000, need to move forward. But some people just say no, we must go back. I don't know, but my way is to do the music like the way I am myself - I'm a modern person even though I come from the tradition."
Subsequent albums worked better when N'Dour decided that what was good enough for the Senegalese market was good enough for everyone else. The second album, Set, was recorded live and the next international release, Eyes Open, contained tracks already released one of those Dakar cassettes. That said, N'Dour has not entirely avoided the gloss of global pop. Seven Seconds, his duet with Neneh Cherry, sold millions in 1994 and his current album, Joko, sees him invoke the production talents of Wyclef Jean and the quite unnecessary services of reliables including Gabriel and Sting.
But whatever your take on the musical twists in the career of Youssou N'Dour, he remains steadfastly true both to his own creative impulse and to himself. He has been Africa's biggest star for many years and has shown his European and US peers a trick or two in the process. The full musical drama of Youssou N'Dour's extraordinary mbalax fusion has repercussions everywhere it goes. Dublin will be no different. Listen without prejudice.
"My journey, my career, is of someone who has met different sounds and different people," he says, "and that makes you a little bit different. I don't feel it's a compromise because that's what I am - I'm African and a modern person."
Youssou N'Dour performs at Vicar Street, Dublin, on Tuesday and Wednesday.