Consumer Guide Album

Etoile de Dakar: Volume 3: Lay Suma Lay [Sterns, 1996]
On the final installment of their collected works, Youssou N'Dour's first band embellish their self-taught Afrocentric charanga with horn lines whose intricately percussive Islamic tune families recall no Latin record I've ever noticed. Cut into still gaudier ribbons by the hectoring tenor of the soon-departed El Hadji Faye, it's wilder and weirder than any mbalax or fusion the nonpareil vocalist has put his name on since. A-