| Eyes Open | |
| Type: | studio |
| Artist: | Youssou N'Dour |
| Border: | yes |
| Released: | 1992 |
| Studio: | Xippi |
| Genre: | Mbalax |
| Label: | 40 Acres and a Mule Musicworks/Columbia |
| Producer: | Youssou N'Dour |
| Prev Title: | Set |
| Prev Year: | 1990 |
| Next Title: | Special Noël |
| Next Year: | 1993 |
Eyes Open is an album by the Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour, released in 1992 via Spike Lee's 40 Acres and a Mule Musicworks label.[1] [2] [3] A video was shot for "Africa Remembers". N'Dour supported the album with a North American tour.[4] Eyes Open was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Best World Music Album".[5]
Recorded at N'Dour's studio in Dakar, Senegal, the album was produced by the musician.[6] [7] The majority of the songs were sung in Wolof.[8] N'Dour contributed liner notes that described the references in his songs.[9] "Hope" is a paean to N'Dour's grandmother.[10] "Country Boy" is about leaving rural life for an urban existence.[11] Assane Thiam contributed on talking drum.[12]
Newsday deemed the album "an annoying yet informative dispatch, a disappointing example of the new cultural multinationalism hovering on the upmarket fringes of so-called world music (so-called, because the marketing term smacks of a western ethnocentrism that assumes we are not the world)."[13] Stereo Review wrote that "N'Dour continues to pump out a propulsive sound that's dazzling in its rich combination of rhythms and irresistible in its melodic urgency."[14] The Christian Science Monitor noted that "N'Dour continues to temper his artful confabulation of African sensibility and American funk."[15]
The Calgary Herald determined that "his band's lopingly propulsive rhythms will remind newcomers to soukous more of reggae's hypnotic sway than rock's straight-ahead rush." Trouser Press stated that "the percussion is downplayed in favor of swooping fretless bass and rock-influenced guitars."[16] Robert Christgau opined that the "mbalax commitments mitigate any conceptual link to studio-rock."