"If I say this, you will think I am crazy," said the guitarist Badou N'Diaye recently, "but Étoile was like the Beatles." This was the young group formed in 1979 out of the remnants of the Star Band, one of Dakar's best-known nightclub acts. Star of the show was "just a boy from the medina", a singer called Youssou N'Dour, who helped encourage a sound that leant more heavily on indigenous traditions. Coinciding with the arrival of cheap cassette players, Étoile became the dominant force in Senegalese music, spurring the creation of the fusion sound of mbalax; when they split, Youssou went on to become a truly global star.