While he is best known for his partnership with Senegalese superstar Baaba Maal, Mansour Seck has quietly built a small but impressive catalog of his own recordings, emphasizing tradition and the guitar. The 1997 recording Yelayo is his most fulfilled work. One gets the impression that Seck is the man who continually brings Maal back to his roots as he wanders through a pop-electronic landscape, and this album shows how deep Seck"s roots are. Two guitars (Mansour Seck and Abdoulaziz Seck), hoddu (a tense-sounding three-string lute played here by Demba Dia), kora (Noumoukunda Cissoko), percussion (Bada Seck), and electric bass (Pathé Jassi) form the ensemble in a dry, distinctive whole where each instrument stands out clearly. Seck is not a great singer in the pop sense, but he is a singer of sincerity and warmth, and these songs are well conveyed by his voice. Unlike his flashy work with Maal"s band, here he presents his music in subtle, understated ways that evoke passion, depth, and grace without pyrotechnics or pop. --Louis Gibson