Ali Farka Touré | 1936 - 2006 | Songhai Music
“You’d think Ali’s just goofing and jamming, but they’re all tunes, because these musicians don’t jam. Americans do, but Africans don’t. They don’t just blow, they play a song. And he says his melodies are ancient melodies and they have a purpose.”
Ry Cooder
I/ The Story of a Land
It’s all about the sun. When, 5 500 years ago, what we now call the Sahara underwent a desertification because of changes in Earth’s orbit around the sun. Plants started to die and humans migrated to the more fertile banks of the Niger river, the third longest river of Africa. The Niger river is a snake weaving between the dunes, shrinking during the dry season, flooding the plains during the rainy season, turning some areas into newborn lakes. Way before humans came near its banks, the Niger river, one of the many names he has in West Africa, lives his own life. During the 15th century, the powerful Songhai Empire lead by Sunni Ali settled on both banks of the Niger river, in nowadays Mali. They made the old city of Gao (established in 800) the capital, which became a cosmopolitan place where the main religion, Islam, cohabited with traditional beliefs. But during the 16th century, the Songhai Empire hegemony ended with the arrival of Moroccan invaders. The history of Mali as we know it now is the consequence of a complex cultural history resting on long lasting traditions.
1. The Roots
Ali Ibrahim Touré was born in the village of Kanau in 1939. He’s a descendant of both the Songhai family and the Arma family, an ethnic group descending from the Morrocan invaders. He receives the surname Farka, meaning “donkey”, an animal known for its strength, because he’s the only one surviving childhood among his ten brothers and sisters. Soon after his father dies during the Second World War, Ali and his mother travel to Timbuktu, where he is raised by his grandmother, Kounandi Samba, a famous healer who teaches him the occult science of jimbala. Jimbalas are spirits living in the Niger river. Each spirit has its own behavior, personality and history. These djinnis are in control of the harmony between the spiritual and the mortal world. When this harmony is broken, unknown disease start to spread, crops die and people reunites during ceremonies where dances and chants are meant to ease them. People with the gift of communicating with these spirits are called “children of the river”. Ali is one of them.
2. Of Songs and Spirits
Ali doesn’t go to school, he spends his time working with his family in the farm, and is also fascinated by the music played during the spiritual ceremonies on the banks of the Niger river. He just seats there and listens carefully to the musicians singing and playing the jurukelen, the njarka and the ngoni. Ali’s family never was into music, but the determination and relentlessness of the young boy made him built his first instrument at the age of 12, a jurukelen (guitar with one chord). One year later, Ali wanders near the river, playing ordinary songs, when he catches sight of three young girls. Suddenly, one of his legs refuses to move. Ali stands still for two hours in the night, before finally being able to move again. The next day, he meets a snake who wrapps itself around his head. Ali manages to get rid off it but then he starts having attacks, and goes to the village of Hombori to be cured, staying there for a year. After this experience, Ali starts playing for the spirits, becoming a « child of the river ». Ali should have replaced his grandmother as a healer, but his passion for music and Islamic beliefs made him take another path.
3. Before the Blues
When Ali Farka Touré turns 17 in 1956, he attends a performance by the great Guinean guitarist Keita Fodéba in Bamako. Fodéba founded a ballet named the Théâtre Africain, touring in Africa for six years, because for the Malinké people (largest subgroup of the Mandé people, many living in the region of Bamako) chants are fundamental, as well as music and dance to express the traditional cultural, moral, intellectual and social values of their world. That’s when Ali decides he wants to be a guitarist, even if he doesn’t own one at the time. In the late sixties, he becomes familiar with artists like Ray Charles, Otis Redding and most importantly John Lee Hooker. Hooker learned the blues with his stepfather Willie Moore, who, like Touré, was an agricultural worker before being a musician. When Touré first hears of John Lee Hooker, he immediately recognizes the sound of the Tamasheq music, (a variety of Tuareg languages spoken by nomadic tribes across North Africa). This is for Touré the confirmation that what Americans call blues comes from the deep traditions of Africa.
4. Back and Forth
During this time, Touré performs with the Troupe 117, a group created by the Malian government after the country’s independence in 1960 in order to promote the arts across the country. In 1968, Ali Farka Touré is selected by the government to represent Mali at an international art festival in Sofia, Bulgaria. On April 21, 1968, he buys his first acoustic guitar. And the first time he starts to play this new instrument, Touré finds it really easy to transpose what he learned with a jurukelen on a guitar. During the seventies, it’s with this guitar that Touré starts to be successful in his homeland. A journalist friend advises him to contact the label SonAfric in Paris. Between 1976 and 1988, Touré records seven albums with them but never receives any money. He goes back to Mali, frustrated by this European experience. Today, his last albums, the Green Album and Red Album are easy to find, and they are the ones that brought him his first major success. Back home, the label World Circuit seeks Touré and convinces him to release his self-titled American debut "Ali Farka Touré", with a touring circuit in Europe, the United States and even Japan.
5. Home's Essence
This self-titled album is the result of a wander along the Niger river. Touré and percussionist Hama Sankaré travelled through Northern Mali to write the songs and then record the album in one afternoon, Touré playing his Bulgarian acoustic guitar. The next album Ali records with World Circuit is The River, capturing the very essence of his relationship with his home country and the Niger river. Then in 1992, Touré starts working on The Source with his band ASCO (Afel Bocoum on vocals, Hama Sankaré on calabash, Oumar Touré on congas). On The Source, Ali Farka Touré works with blues legend Taj Mahal on the track Roucky, once again tracing the bond between African American Blues and the traditional songs from Mali. The same year, during a party backstage in a London club, Touré meets Ry Cooder and both fall in love with each other’s work. Touré even offers Cooder the jurukelen he made at the age of 12. A few months later, Cooder receives Touré in his home of Los Angeles. In three days, they record Talking Timbuktu and win a Grammy Award for Best World Music Album which opens him the gates of the United States and brings him instant fame. And the first thing Touré does after that, is to retire from playing music to go back to his farm in Niafunké.
6. A Farmer First
But if Touré wants to take care of his rice farm only, always introducing himself as a farmer first, then a musician, producer Nick Gold from World Circuit travels to Niafunké in order to set up a portable equipment in an abandoned brick hall. They also have to use gasoline generators to compensate for the fact that Touré’s hometown has no power lines. The crew has to wait ‘till Touré is done with his daily work so he can play the guitar. “We were in the middle of the landscape which inspired the music that in turn inspired myself and the musicians. In the West, perhaps this music is just entertainment, and I don’t expect people to understand.” Touré releases his new album Niafunké in 1999. As well as with his previous albums, Touré sings in several languages. Most of his songs are in peul and songhai, but he also knows bozo, zarma, bamana, dogon and tamasheq. In 2004, Touré is elected mayor of his hometown Niafunké. He spends most of his time in the area, planning to tackle the malaria problem, to plant more trees and clean the region. The very same year, the Malian legend kora player Toumani Diabaté teams up with Touré.
7. Hotel Mandé
World Circuit comes in again to set up another mobile studio in the Hotel Mandé of Bamako, with a view on the Niger river. Together, they record In The Heart of the Moon, made of traditional songs familiar to both. Diabaté and Touré never rehearses, recording the album with only single takes, (the album Ali and Toumani released in 2010 was recorded around the same time). We’re in 2005, and Ali Farka Touré, now aged 66, is diagnosed with bone cancer. He begins to record what will be his testament, Savane. The album is made of traditional Songhaï and Fulani songs (one of the largest ethnic group in West Africa and Sahel). He is also joined by ngoni players Bassékou Kouyaté and Mama Sissoko who adapted their Mandé playing (southern Mali) to his northern style. Touré dies on March 7, 2006, buried in Niafunké, and the album is released four months later. Touré’s legacy is huge and we always need to remember that being able to hear recordings by Ali Farka Touré is one of the biggest luck we have, since he always saw himself as a farmer, and that the process of recording never was a part of the oral traditions of Mali. He was one of the first to do that, and now Mali is everywhere.
Ali Farka Touré and Ry Cooder recording Talking Timbutku
II/ The Music
1. The First Album - Ali Farka Touré (1976)
The concept of a “first album” for Ali Farka Touré can be misleading. Touré started making music during the fifties, but the first time he recorded songs in a studio was only in the seventies we he travelled to France and met the label SonAfric. If the second album by Touré is light-hearted, mostly thanks to his sense of humour, Ali Touré “Farka” is a much more serious album. With only four tracks, but each one longer than five minutes, the Malian guitarist already proves everything he is able of. In the liner notes of his second album out the same year, Ali Farka Touré, le jeune chansonnier du mali (The young Malian singer), it is said that these songs are melodic and poignant poems about his peers. For instance, Harsani is dedicated to Mariam Barry, a famous peul woman in his region. Out of the seven albums he recorded with SonAfric, his first one probably is the most simple in terms of instrumentation. With his voice and his guitar, Touré makes us feel the emotions he was spreading along the Niger river, walking near the spirits, delighting his peers with his talent as a guitarist, singer and lyricist.
2. The Last Album - Savane (2006)
A few months after the passing of guitar virtuoso Ali Farka Touré, World Circuit released Savane – his last solo album. Savane is a timely envoi to a flawless career, and albeit cliché (or just poetic) to say, no record before it better exemplifies the full range of his artistry. Touré was a musician who understood restraint, he knew how to linger on a note and stretch it far out or hold back and let the rest of the instrumentation come to the forefront. But on Savane he and his company charge full force in perfect unison; the fingerpicking is some of his most energetic; the production is lofty and the melody, like always, is hypnotic. Touré wanted to go all out with this album and he achieves that (especially in the first half). He opts for playing alongside an ensemble throughout, creating fuller compositions and an emphasis on timbre rather than rhythm. This may seem like Touré getting experimental but I would argue it’s him going back to his roots. After all, Touré was never the lonesome woe-is-me type of “bluesman” as his music harks back to traditional Tishoumaren (popularly known as desert blues) which is typically played by a group, a setting Touré navigates comfortably judging from what an excellent bandleader he was. Upon listening to Savane you know that this is the product of over 40 years of musical craft and a lifetime of heritage; this is Touré at his most boastful and rightfully so. Overall Savane is another near perfect album from the late Ali Farka Touré, Allah Yerhamo.
(written by a collaborator)
3. The Album - The Source (1993)
Four decades of music, around seventeen studio albums and yet, The Source always stands out as Ali Farka Touré’s most impressive work. Recorded in two hours with his newly formed band ASCO (made of four men he trusts and loves with all his heart) The Source is an hour-long mesmerizing album that will introduce you to the most beautiful and spiritual side of his music. Sung in five languages (songhai, peul, tamasheq, french and dogon), The Source tells many stories from Mali’s several cultures. On Hawa Dolo, Ali Farka Touré praises the wisdom of a well-known young girl in Dogon country, while Karaw is a celebration of Mali’s farmers fighting the relentless weather conditions and Inchana Massina lauds prophet Mohammed Benit. And when Touré lets his guitar slides in pure awe, on Roucky with Taj Mahal, or during the magnificent instrumental Cinquante Six, his magic washes over us for one of the most memorably blissful moment in music. Rare are those albums capable of making you feel at peace with yourself and your environment the same way Touré does with The Source.
III/ The Playlist