#malian blues

[moodyamericanaballads]

Dofana ~ Ali Farka Toure

Some people like to compare Ali Farka Toure to John Lee Hooker. While technically correct, a much more apt comparison is Junior Kimbrough. Toure has the same hypnotism, the way he takes a single riff and just runs with it for ten minute, discovering its ins and outs, its very soul. Hooker tends to use his riffs as part of a conversation with his lyrics, a call-response structure that highlights the story he is telling. Toure seems to me, like Kimbrough, to turn any lyrics or singing he might have into the response, playing with it in some ways as simply as sound (but perhaps this feeling is a function of linguistic barrier). And riff he does, painting one of the coolest musical pictures in the entire blues tradition.

It should be pretty obvious that Toure is not, in fact, American (he is from Mali). However, just as with the inclusion of Jazz as with part of "Americana", I see this blog as not rooted in a geographic function of America but in America as a collection of ideas and traditions which is flexible enough to encompass those working in other nations and contexts. 

[spirits-to-bite-our-ears]

With his first recording, Vieux Farka Toure followed fairly closely in his father's footsteps, recording a modernized version of the traditional West African music that fathered the American blues. With his second record, 2009's Fondo, he branched out further and began to really find his own sound, a combination of his father's music, with elements of rock, Latin music, and other pan-African influences thrown in.

[spirits-to-bite-our-ears]

But Vieux was not always the obvious successor to Ali's musical legacy. It wasn't until Ali had lost much of his movement to bone cancer, when Vieux's recording was being made, that Ali realized just how musically adept Vieux had become. Growing up, Vieux played calabash (a dried gourd drum used in Mali) and other percussion, but his father didn't want Vieux to face the same struggles he had as a musician, and discouraged him from following the same path.

The Touré family comes from a noble lineage, in a land where musicians usually come from a musical caste, lower on the social scale. Ali went against his own family's societal role to become a musician and suffered as a result; first toiling to make a living at home in Mali, and then getting cheated by a French producer early in his career.

Ali wanted his son to become a soldier. But Vieux secretly took up the guitar behind closed doors. He enrolled in the Arts Institute in Bamako, the same institution where Habib Koite and many other Malian musicians of note studied. When Ali realized Vieux was not going to give up on playing guitar, he enlisted his good friend Toumani Diabaté as Vieux's advisor. When young North American producer Eric Herman expressed interest in recording Vieux he had to seek permission from Diabaté, the senior Touré, and other community elders. Once Diabaté and Touré heard Vieux's initial recordings, they realized they had underestimated the younger Touré's virtuosity.

[spirits-to-bite-our-ears]

Being born in the shadow of a famous parent is never easy.  But sometimes one of those sons will come around who has become a star in their own right that burns just as brightly as their parents.  With his 2010 World Cup performance before a billion people in Johannesburg, South Africa, Vieux Farka Touré has become one of the most celebrated African guitarists in history.

Vieux Farka Touré is the son of the late Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré, and Vieux follows in his father's legendary footsteps with his own take on Malian "blues"—the spare, acoustic, guitar-driven style pioneered by his father.

Vieux's self-titled debut was released in February, 2007, and featured the last recordings of his father, who passed away in 2006, as well as a guest appearance from the equally legendary kora virtuoso (and longtime family friend) Toumani Diabaté.