Nothing's in Vain (Coono Du Reer)

Youssou N'Dour's long-awaited Nothing's In Vain (Coono Du Reer) is the first album N'Dour has made directly for Nonesuch. This maiden Nonesuch album purposefully continues the essential ambition of N'Dour's career - to nurture a flowering of the musical traditions of his native Senegal within an envelope of modernist pop idioms that defy all borders.

Critics and fans have long appreciated N'Dour's alacrity in weaving disparate strands of Senegalese and other world musics into an infectiously uplifting personal sound. With Nothing's In Vain, they are in for the treat of N'Dour's more-liberal-than-ever use of traditional acoustic instruments - such as the twenty-one-stringed kora (West African folk harp), the five-stringed xalam (Senegalese lute) or the single-stringed riti (Senegalese violin) - side-by-side with the more familiar complement of Senegalese percussion (sabar) and chattering guitars made famous by previous recordings.

That N'Dour would continue - by making an album like Nothing's In Vain - to brave the hydra-headed critique of traditionalists at home, world music purists abroad and nostalgics and pop reductionists everywhere (those who would tailor him down to a stadium-swaying African music icon) is not in the least surprising. Such uncanny insouciance - a resistance to musical conservatism of any stripe - pretty much describes who N'Dour is as an artist. And this is the Youssou N'Dour we already know. It is rather the range of colors, and the gracefulness of their blend, which surprise in Nothing's In Vain.