Beyond ‘Graceland’ With Senegal’s Youssou N’Dour

As part of the Amnesty International tour last year, Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour did more than provide Third World contrast and context for First World stars Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Sting and Tracy Chapman. He showed large audiences on five continents that modern Afro-pop goes far beyond “Graceland.”

At the Palace on Wednesday, N’Dour and his 10-member band accomplished even more than that, rendering the terms Third World , Afro-pop and even world beat inadequate to describe their music. N’Dour’s almost unearthly singing and percolating rhythms bear only passing resemblance to the Nigerian juju of King Sunny Ade or the South African township jive that inspired “Graceland,” relating more to the contemporary music coming from Islamic North Africa. (The South African style was represented by opening group Themba, an a cappella sextet of South African UCLA students.)

But it’s N’Dour’s cosmopolitan cross-pollination that gave the show its distinctive air. Much of the music Wednesday reflected the slinky, modern, global melange of his occasional collaborator Gabriel. And the cross-cultural crowd seemed quite ready to take N’Dour not as an African musician, but as an inventive pop musician.