Youssou N'Dour, the senegalese singer-songwriter with the amazing ululating voice, has been courting an international pop audience since his first collaborations with Peter Gabriel in the mid-Eighties. But a successful marriage of First and Third World music is a tricky balancing act, and N'Dour's first two major-label albums (one produced by Gabriel) presented an extraordinary singer who seemed confused about how (or whether) to adapt his music while still delivering the sharp, rich mbalax rhythm that made him Number One at home. On Eyes Open, however, N'Dour has created a musical context that's as large with possibilities as his sinuous, spine-tingling singing.

Produced by N'Dour, long (nearly an hour and fifteen minutes), confident and pointedly cosmopolitan, Eyes Open is an epic-size record that lays claim to a universe of pop while never dropping its West African accent. "New Africa" bubbles with modern synthesizers that jam with ancient talking drums as choppy guitar patterns insinuate an R&B mood; "Africa Remembers" lopes along at an almost reggae pace, layered with cool, jazzy sax solos; "No More," a spare acoustic ballad, sparkles with flamenco-style guitar. The world, N'Dour seems to be saying, is my jukebox. At times he even sounds like he's singing in tongues, his Arabic-inflected wail ping-ponging from English to Wolof, from Wolof to French, in the same phrase.

N'Dour's graceful, exuberant eclecticism is Nineties sharp, yet paradoxically, it is the extension of a tradition more than 500 years old. Senegal sits at the crossroads of the centuries-old trade route connecting Europe and West Africa, Christianity and Islam. In old Senegal, Spanish and Arabic voices intertwined with the drums and dances of a half-dozen African cultures. Nowadays, as N'Dour points out in his ironic "Live Television," the cultural trade routes follow electronic, not dirt, tracks: "We can watch Senegalese TV, the BBC, MTV." N'Dour's Eyes Open is the Senegalese mix, updated for the global bazaar. (RS 638)

DAISANN MCLANE