Dakar, July 1 (APS) – Musician Yoro Ndiaye has just released a new album of 12 tracks inspired by traditional themes, including the importance of preserving African values and returning to one’s roots.
The album also deals with love, a universal subject, and the protection of the environment, a theme that can be both current and transversal, although the question of values and identity seems to be the marker of this album, whose title, “Yaay Kan?” (Who are you? in Wolof), gives all its meaning to this reading.
“Today we live in a world where it is easy to get lost. We must therefore know ourselves, hence the title ‘Yaay Kan?’” explained the musician during a ceremony to present his new production in Dakar.
“‘Yaay Kan?’ is a call for openness in rootedness,” he said, suggesting that awareness of identity, rather than leading to confinement, should induce the first impulse towards the other, openness and sharing.
According to Yoro Ndiaye, an artist must have an open mind by refusing to be confined to a single musical genre.
“I have always refused to be considered a folk singer or any other genre, I am an artist, I can sing mbalax, reggae…” he maintained.
Yoro Ndiaye experiments with this spirit of openness by collaborating, for this album, with artists such as Didier Awadi, Ash the Best and Tapha Diarraby. A way also to test oneself, to rub shoulders with something else and to get out of one’s comfort zone to escape artistic confinement, for new inspirations.
To promote his fifth album, the artist announced a tour planned in Canada this month.
He will also continue to perform as part of a showcase that he hosts every Friday, for a partnership with a Dakar hotel establishment.
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