Ali Farka Toure

Last night (Aug. 4, 2000), I heard the greatest guitarist in the world. Performing at Town Hall as part of a 3 day festival of African music sponsored by the Knitting Factory, Ali Farka Toure and his 8 piece ensemble demonstrated why the musicians of contemporary Mali are in the vanguard of world music.

The music of Mali is very much a product of geographical and historical circumstance. From indigenous Africa, it derives the rhythm and basic improvisational approach. Since Mali was conquered by Moroccans in the 17th century, its culture reflects Islamic influences as well. In the case of Toure and Salif Keita--another well-known Malian singer--you hear the declamatory phrasing of the muzzein, who calls the faithful to prayer. And, finally, from the west you hear its greatest gift--that of popular music whose influence comes from phonograph records rather than multinational banks or the Marines.

For Toure, this would seem to mean American blues. When I first heard him on the radio, I couldn't figure out whether Mali had spontaneously generated its own kind of blues style or whether Toure had been listening to American records. Subsequently I discovered that he considered American blues musicians close relatives.

In a June 26, 1999 interview with the London Daily Telegraph, Toure explains how this discovery was first made. In Bamako, Mali's capital, a student friend introduced him to the music of John Lee Hooker.

"I thought he was Malian because of what I heard. It was 100 per cent our music. The roots are in Africa. There is something there; the trunk of the tree, but there are lots of branches and, on the branches, are the leaves, and certain fruits, and it's dispersed. Musically, it's African, but the words are in American.

"When you take music such as John Lee Hooker does, you're going to find what we have at home: the greenery, the savannah where you have water. It's poetic, truly poetic, very poetic. All that was missing was for him to speak our language to complete the truth."

By the same token, Toure denies that Hooker's music was an "influence" as such --his own style was pretty much fully-formed by the time he heard the American-- but he was struck by the resemblance to some of the Tamacheq and Peul music he had already incorporated in his broader Malian idiom. These genres derive from the various tribes and ethnic groupings of the Timbuktu province. (Tamacheq is the language of the Tuareg nomads of northern Mali. The Peul peoples are from the Mopti area.)

In last night's performance, Toure used an electric guitar until the very end in contradistinction to the six-string acoustic guitar of his recordings. The acoustic guitar lends itself to the "blues style" evoked in the Malian voice, most prominently featured on his recordings. With an electric guitar, the sound is much more African. In songs that delivered messages about the need to remain honest, shun material acquisitiveness and live a simple life, Toure drew out some of the most passionate and lyrical phrasing from this instrument that I have ever heard in person or recording. As people used to say about another great African musician, the pianist Art Tatum who lived in the Diaspora, "God was in the house."

American musicians who heard Ali Farka Toure recordings were anxious to play with him at the first opportunity. Since his style seemed so similar to their own, there seemed to be solid grounds for collaboration.

The experience was mixed. Speaking of Taj Mahal, who played with Toure on "The Source," Toure says, "We had every imaginable problem. He couldn't even manage to play or keep up. He was very tiring, very tiring. But I liked him very much. I like that about him a lot, he really wants to learn. It's not that he understands what I sing. He can't, no."

Toure also recorded with Ry Cooder, who produced both the CD and the movie featuring Cuban musicians under the title Buena Vista Social Club. The best you can say about their collaboration "Talking Timbuktu" is that when Cooder is not playing, it is very great music.

The experience of playing abroad, and with musicians like Mahal and Cooder in a vain attempt to create a "world music" synthesis, left him dissatisfied. He never really aspired to be part of this marketing category to begin with. As a matter of principle, he sings in Malian languages and refuses to sing in French, the "language of colonialism" foisted on his people, let alone in English as Senegalese superstar Youssou N'dour has essayed with disastrous results.

On his latest recording "Niafunke", named after the farming village community he has poured his fortune and time into, he has returned to his Malian roots. Niafunke expresses the hopes of most Africans to re-create the ecology and economy of Africa's fertile past.

Since Niafunke is in proximity to the desert, which is advancing southward all across sub-Saharan Africa, Toure has tried to irrigate the desert soil to make it self-sufficient in fresh fruit and vegetables.

The Daily Telegraph reports:

"The project is, as yet, still in the early stages: the fields have been marked out, and the tractors and bulldozers Ali has bought are hard at work. While there will eventually be areas dedicated to rice, citrus fruits and green vegetables, only the mango groves have been fully planted and cultivated. Ali is intensely proud of his mangoes - '100 per cent organic, no chemicals!' he beams - and favoured visitors are liable to be presented with a crate of the delicious fruit to take home with them. These fields, and their yields, will be donated to the people of the village. Eventually he intends to build homes there, including one for himself."

The song "Ali's Here" from the album expresses his hopes:

This is a message to my people

that honey does not only taste

good in one mouth. I'm here and

I'm going to share it.

Everything I have gained through

my music goes back to the land

for the people.

(Another Malian guitarist and singer, Afel Bocoum, opened for Toure. He was absolutely magnificent. He has one CD to his credit--"Alkibar"--that one must assume is worth adding to one's collection, as are all of Ali Farka Toure's.)