No Sant

No Sant

Sultry-voiced Diop merges the acoustic African sounds of artists like Lokua Kanza (who appears on <I>No Sant</I>) and Henri Dikongue with the Western pop leanings of Youssou N'Dour. As such he is a world troubadour who just happens to be African, and fittingly he has assembled an eclectic global coterie of artists on this diverse collection of well-crafted and extremely musical songs. Consequently you will hear elements as diverse as Japanese opera vocals and Bretonese <I>cornemuse</I> (bagpipes) in the jazzy pop arrangements of his Senegal-based songs. Carefully sequenced, these 12 tracks range between folksy intimacy and full-on stadium anthems, all of them slickly produced and poised to position the work of this eloquent artist in any cosmopolitan record collection. <i>--Derek Rath</I>