Legendary Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré died this week in Mali after a long illness. His exact age is unknown; he was probably born in 1939. Best known in the USA for his 1994 album with Ry Cooder, Talking Timbuktu, he leaves behind a body of powerful and idiosyncratic recorded work that stands as some of the best that Africa has ever had to offer. Having achieved international fame in his 50s, he spent the last twenty or so years of his life as he spent this first fifty - as a farmer. The only difference being, from time to time he would step up to a microphone and record some of the finest, deepest, and most elemental guitar music ever made.
I have been fumbling with a proper obituary for the man for an hour now, and I can't seem to do him justice. Instead, I will quote from a short piece I wrote in 2004 about Malian music that I feel captures what made Ali Farka Touré special.
Ali Farka Touré himself is a farmer and local (what ... chief? mayor? paterfamilias?), who tends to his village first and his music second. In 1995, he reputedly begged off a US tour claiming that he could not leave his home because if he did, he risked losing his land in an armed skirmish. When in 1998, one of his US labels, Hannibal, wanted to record a new record with him Touré insisted the producers bring a mobile recording rig to his compound at Niafunké. The stunning resulting album, aptly titled Niafunké, was recorded whenever farm chores did not press and whenever the mood struck to pick up his guitar.
In 2000, Touré decided to come to the USA for one last tour before devoting all his time to a village irrigation project. I was lucky enough to see his New York date, August 8, 2000, and I can't ever forget it. A big man in person, on stage he looked ten feet tall, wielding his electric guitar like it was a toy and wrenching from it some of the most searing melodies I have ever heard. He was playful, switching between guitar and njerka (a small one-stringed fiddle) and stopping to explain to the New York audience what he was singing about in the eleven languages he writes in. About halfway through the show, he struck on the game of lifting his leg way up in the air and bringing it down onto the stage with a huge *boom*. His band worked the *boom* into the deep percolating groove they had built, and soon Touré was *boom*ing away, each one accented by a chord from his guitar that sounded like trees breaking in the wind. The entire night was unforgettable and absolutely one of a kind. Ali Farka Touré is often compared to John Lee Hooker, whose elemental blues sound seemed to emanate from some half-remembered Mali of the mind, but on that night Ali Farka Touré sounded like Timbuktu.
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