News Release

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Grammy-winning world music star
Youssou N’Dour to perform at UNC

By ROSEMARY HOLLAND
Carolina Performing Arts Series

CHAPEL HILL — Senegalese world music star Youssou N’Dour and Egyptian composer Fathy Salama, with his Cairo Orchestra, will perform at 8 p.m. Nov. 1 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The concert in Memorial Hall will be part of the 2005-2006 Carolina Performing Arts Series.

Peter Gabriel, with whom N’Dour sang the "In Your Eyes" duet on Gabriel’s album "So," called N’Dour "one of the best (singers) alive." A reporter for Rolling Stone once described N’Dour as "a singer with a voice so extraordinary that the history of Africa seems locked inside it."

Descended from griots – maintainers of the oral history of West African tribes and villages – N’Dour pioneered "mbalax," fusing traditional Senegalese percussion and griot singing with Afro-Cuban and indigenous dance-pop flavors. With Salama, he has turned his attention to the heart of Muslim mystical culture in Senegal-Sufi culture, delving into the links between his homeland’s religious beliefs and those of Muslims in Egypt and the Middle East.

The result: a 2005 Grammy award for best contemporary world music album.

Single tickets – $26 to $60 for the public and $10 for Carolina students – are available by calling (919) 843-3333, or from the Memorial Hall box office on Cameron Avenue, open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Carolina students should call the box office for purchasing information. Series subscriptions also are available.

On performance days, the box office is open from 10 a.m. until intermission. For more information, e-mail performingarts@unc.edu or visit www.unc.edu/performingarts.

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For more information on N’Dour, visit http://www.imnworld.com/IMN/artist_view/50/

Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/memorial/youssou_n’dour.jpg

Carolina Performing Arts Series contact: Jennifer Smith, (919) 966-3834 or jwsmith@unc.edu

News Services contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589