Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté: Ali and Toumani

 

Sean Murphy reviews Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté's Ali and Toumani.

There are no dull or mediocre moments, but a few songs immediately stand out. The third track, "Be Mankan", is a tranquil waltz that features a subtle but striking kora performance. As Touré establishes the melody and reiterates it, Diabaté echoes every move, like a mono recording spliced with a stereo overdub. "Samba Geladio" is another irresistible groove that is quite reminiscent of "ASCO" (from 1999’s Niafunké).  Indeed, it is very like an acoustic version of that jam. "Sina Mory" is one of the few tracks with singing, and it was inspired by the suggestion that Touré recall the first song that inspired him to play guitar. Needless to say there is a full-circle element to these moving circumstances, with memory living - and kept alive - through music.

This is a deep, darkly beautiful work. The interplay between these two men is exceedingly rare in any type of music. Ali and Toumani is profound and powerful, with a soft accumulating force, like the individual drips of ice that form a river. This desert music is very much like the desert itself: it is expansive and immutable, and it will endure.

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Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabete: Ali and Toumani

Mikael Wood reviews Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabete's, "Ali and Toumani"

"Ali and Toumani" contains the final recordings made by a pair of master musicians: the Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré, who died in 2006, and the Cuban bassist Orlando "Cachaíto" Lopez, who died last year. But this 11-track album -- the second collection of collaborations by Touré and the Malian kora player Toumani Diabeté -- doesn't sound like death. Rather, it's an early contender for the warmest, most life-affirming listen of 2010.

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Ali Farka Touré - "Niafunké"

Essential World Music Records #1: Ali Farka Touré - "Niafunké"

Before Ry Cooder started the Cuban boom thru the Buena Vista Social Club project, he had already recorded "Talking Timbuktu" with Ali Farka Touré. Artistically "Talking Timbuktu" represented the definitive affirmation of a Malian blues man that from then on, intensified the number of shows worldwide, in personal terms however it meant a drift from values that he considered more important.
Ali Farka Touré was never happy with the show business life, many were the times that Touré thought of abandoning his life as musician. This sentiment is reflected in his last rare live appearances outside their natural environment: the village of Niafunké, on the edge of the Sahara Desert, around the Niger River, where there is no electricity or running water. There, Ali Farka Touré, father of 11 and 60 years old, has put the cultivation of the land above the music, investing all the money earned from this activity in agricultural machinery. He felt a certain discomfort in his successive world tours for losing the essence of his roots, it would be inevitable to record Niafunké the 'place of origin of this music - deep Mali', recorded by a mobile studio fed by a generator.
"Niafunké" is probably the greatest album of the life of Ali Farka Touré and a serious candidate to best world album of the 90s. In "Talking Timbuktu" the production of Ry Cooder created a greater range of sounds that helped build the great songs sweetened for western ears; in "Niafunké" we see the return to land and sound of the first recordings that "Radio Mali" (96) document. "Niafunké" is the return of someone who matured his musical vision on a global stage and works the land every day. "Niafunké" may not have songs as melodic as "Talking Timbuktu", but gains in authenticity that is reflected not only in Toure's most audacious guitar playing, as the musicians accompanying him. The warm female choruses, the rhythms of the turbulent calabash, the djembe and congas to remind Oumou Sangare, the sound of Njarka 's trance, lead us into a journey of devotion and drunkenness and giving us all the purity of deep Mali, where the blues were born.

Ali Farka Toure & Vieux Farka Toure

Reviews of Ali Farka Toure's Savane and Vieux Farka Toure's first album Vieux Farka Toure.

One immediate response, when presented with these two albums—the first posthumous release by the extraordinary Malian guitarist and singer Ali Farka Toure, and the first ever release by his son, Vieux Farka Toure—might be to see in the albums the passing of the “desert blues” flame from one generation to the next. In a sense, of course, that is indeed what Savane and Vieux Farka Toure represent, for the transmission of tradition from father to son is established practice amongst West African musicians—and Ali duly anoints his son's debut with two cameo appearances, one of which is amongst the album's highlights.

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Toumani Diabate and Ali Farka Toure, In the Heart of the Moon

Ali Farka Toure points out in a heartfelt sleeve note that it is rare to find musicians from such different cultures collaborating in Mali. This is especially true of the northern desert traditions Ali has devoted his musical life to, and the sometimes exclusive world of Mande griots in which Toumani was nurtured. On top of that, there is the grandeur of these particular figures: Ali, the quintessential "African bluesman," legendary champion of northern music, and worldwide icon of African guitar; and Toumani, commonly acclaimed by those in the know as the greatest living player of the demanding, 21-string West African harp, the kora. Ali and Toumani inhabit the top tier of Mali’s musical pantheon, and yet there is an endearing father/son dynamic at play between them, with Ali having entered music in part under the tutelage of Toumani’s father Sidiki, and having known Toumani literally since the kora maestro’s infancy. Ali writes that Sidiki taught him the classic Mande repertoire back in the 1950s and 60s, and the songs of that era dominate here. Indeed, thought this is not the genre Ali is best known for, classic Made fare was the music that first inspired him to pick up a guitar back in 1956. Add to this compelling story line the lush, rich sound recording achieved by World Circuit’s secret weapon - engineer Jerry Boys - and this release is automatically one for the history books.

You can find the full review here