No Sant

Sultry-voiced Diop merges the acoustic African sounds of artists like Lokua Kanza (who appears on No Sant) 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 cornemuse (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. --Derek Rath