Youssou N'Dour: Open N'Dour

Backstage at the Metropole theatre in Berlin the artist's dressing-rooms are smothered in graffiti, mostly messages from bands stating their supremacy or complaining about the squalor. To the left of Youssou N'Dour's room, someone has written "AC/DC might have been 'ere". N'Dour says he's heard of AC/DC, although he doesn't own any of their records.

It makes you wonder if AC/DC have heard of Youssou N'Dour. He is, after all, Africa's biggest-selling artist and has an unmistakeable voice, which Peter Gabriel described as "liquid silver". Yet the 43-year-old from Senegal has long been consigned to that nebulous genre called world music, a ghetto for artists working outside the Western tradition who sound a little, you know, exotic. N'Dour is pragmatic about the term. "I suppose you could say that I make world music, in that it brings together sounds from all over the world. But it's not very imaginative, I admit."

In fact, N'Dour is celebrated for introducing the world to the musical style known as mbalax, a blend of Cuban and Senegalese percussion and Western-style rock and pop. In his 22-year career he has sung mostly in Wolof, his native language, with a smattering of English and French. His lyrics touch on issues close to his country – poverty, slavery and migration.

At home in Senegal's capital Dakar, N'Dour isn't known only as a world-famous musician; – he also owns what is in effect a recording empire. Alongside his label, Jololi, on which he releases his own records and those of local artists such as Cheikh Lo, he runs a cassette factory, recording studio, radio station and the Thoissane, the city's biggest nightclub. A few years ago he helped to launch a newspaper, since handed over to his partners. N'Dour says he sees his businesses as a means to boost the local economy and create jobs(he employs 150 people) as well as to generate interest in music.

N'Dour was born in 1959 into a middle-class family in the medina section of Dakar, a descendent of a line of griots, or praise singers, an oral tradition dating back hundreds of years before the introduction of Islam and the arrival of French colonisers in sub-Saharan Africa. "Every weekend the house was full of people, and people were singing," he recalls. "It was a wonderful environment for me." At the age of 12 he was performing at religious ceremonial occasions with his mother. Cuban music also had a great impact: the sound made the return trip to Africa in the 1940s and 1950s and has flourished. And he was captivated by the blues and soul booming from the clubs, notably James Brown and Smokey Robinson.

N'Dour was clearly a precocious youth. Not old enough to play in local venues, he found a way to get his music heard. When he was 14 he and his friends would set up their instruments in the car park of Dakar's biggest club and drown out the music with their rhythmic groove. "We had more people dancing outside than in," he laughs. "Eventually the boss of the club came out and said, 'This is great, but why don't you come and play indoors?'"

At 15 he was appearing with Etoile de Dakar, a leading dance band. A few years later he left and formed his own band, the Super Etoile, and quickly became one of Senegal's biggest stars. His international career was launched in the late 1970s when a French-Senegalese taxi-drivers' association arranged for him to play concerts in Paris. Then he made his first trip to Britain, where he met Peter Gabriel.

"People thought I was stupid that I didn't know him. He came to see me and I thought, 'He's a cool man.' When he left, everyone in the room was staring at me and saying, 'Don't you know who he is? He's the greatest musician in Britain!' Later that year I was in my house in Dakar and I looked out the window and saw Peter Gabriel. I couldn't believe it. He was on vacation, but he came to see my performance every night at my club and he invited me to his studio in Bath."

Gabriel used one of their recordings for his 1986 album So, and later invited N'Dour to support him on his American tour. "Every night, before I went on stage, he would go out and tell the people about my music and ask them to listen closely. It was very moving."

In 1988 N'Dour joined Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Chapman and others on the Amnesty International world tour. But it was the song "Seven Seconds", a duet with Neneh Cherry on N'Dour's 1994 album Wommat, that sent him into the musical stratosphere. Loathed by stuffy purists but loved by everyone else, the song sold three million and went to No 1 in the UK. "It changed everything for me. People went back and discovered all this music I'd been making for 15 years. People suddenly knew who I was and where I came from."

Nowadays no politically-conscious, world-music loving musician's album is complete without a guest appearance from Youssou. His collaborators have included Paul Simon, Branford Marsalis, Wyclef Jean and, of course, Sting.

There have also been careers lows. Following the Amnesty concerts the major labels were queuing up to sign him, doubtless hoping to land the next Bob Marley. But the sales of his 1989 album The Lion and its follow-up Set were disappointing, and he was dropped. The greatest problem was N'Dour's insistence that the songs released at home in Senegal were re-recorded for an international market. These secondary recordings came with an unpleasant pop veneer that suggested the intervention of an over-zealous producer.

N'Dour's latest release, Nothing's In Vain (Coono du reer), is the first Senegal-recorded album to be released in its original form to the international market. The largely acoustic album, which uses traditional Senegalese percussion such as the kora, the xalam lute and the one-string riti violin, has been hailed as a return to form. It's warm, textural and more diverse in style than his other works.

"I feel I have pushed myself further than before," he says. "I had a concept for this album – using modern songs and setting them against traditional instruments. I realised there were all these local instruments I had never used before." When I ask if he regrets any of his choices on his former albums, he talks at length about life being like a school and how music is a personal journey. Evidently he does, though he's not quite ready to say so.

Recently, N'Dour's international role as been as much social and political ambassador as musician, having been closely involved with Unicef and other aid organisations. He insists he's not looking for a career in politics – "I think my music is stronger than politics. I can reach more people and at least I don't get up on stage and tell lies" – but it is clear that he sees himself as a force for change in Africa. "If I can use my position to help my country, then I will. But the music is the thing that sustains me. Without it, I couldn't achieve anything at all."

Youssou N'Dour plays Colston Hall, Bristol tomorrow; Pennington's, Bradford on Tuesday; Liverpool University on Thursday; and The Forum, London next Friday. 'Nothing's in Vain' is out now on Nonesuch/East West