WSJ profiles Youssou N’Dour, and how he tried to put his love of Islam in song. That’s where his problems began:
Director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi wasn’t familiar with Youssou N’Dour and his music until six months before she decided to commit five years of her life to making a movie about him. Ms. Vasarhelyi’s documentary about the Senegalese singer, “Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love,” opens in limited release June 12 in New York before rolling out to more cities later in the summer. Now that the director has had the opportunity to follow Mr. N’Dour through an eventful period in his life—including the low of a failed album release and the high of a Grammy Award win—she has become a die-hard fan. Mr. N’Dour “has got one of the most extraordinary voices on earth,” says Ms. Vasarhelyi, an American-born, Princeton-educated filmmaker. “And he has always sung about what he believes in—it’s kind of like the way Bob Marley was.” – from WSJ