Youssou N'Dour: I Bring What I Love

Audiences unfamiliar with charismatic and gifted Senegalese singer Youssou Ndour will likely be struck by his magnificent voice, but still kept at a distance from the preachy nature of his songs' religious rhetoric. Director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's passion for her devout Sufi Muslim subject blinds her to a need for shaping a coherent story in a puffy documentary that goes slack with gooey adulation more often than not. A quick tour through Youssou's early steps to becoming a singer of the "Griot" tradition, against his father's wishes, gives way to sequences of harmonically rich concert performances throughout Europe and at New York's Carnegie Hall. The thematic thrust of the film comes through in the Senegalese people's disapproval of Youssou's 2004 concept album "Egypt," released during Ramadan, because they resented their musical hero's use of religious subjects in his songs. The complaint is not without merit even if Youssou's winning of a Grammy award for the album eventually overshadowed the issue, at least in the Western world.
Not Rated. 102 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)