The Music of Mali: Part 2
Ali Farka Touré: The Godfather of Desert Blues
As I said earlier, Tuaregs represent a small percentage of the Malian population, which is mostly of sub-Saharan ancestry. The music of these peoples bears a striking resemblance not only to Tuareg music, but also to music from the rest of West Africa. One of the most famous guitarists from this scene was Malian legend, Ali Farka Touré who, before his death from bone cancer in 2006, helped shape a formidable regional music scene that continues to blossom. His success helped launch a couple of generations of African blues guitarists after him, including his son, Vieux Farka Touré.
The guitar reached Touré much after traditional Malian stringed instruments did, e.g. the n’goni (a lute-like instrument), the djerkel (a single-stringed instrument), and the njarka (a violin-like instrument). When he picked up the guitar, he migrated his traditional finger-picking playing style and Western African scales, creating a sort of hypnotic — and to the uninitiated like me, mysterious — style of guitar-playing that reminded many of blues guitarist John Lee Hooker. This isn’t surprising, given that the blues are just an Americana-infused descendant of West African music similar to the sort that Touré would’ve played on those traditional Malian instruments; but they are both distinct artforms. Touré, in many ways a traditionalist, hated being called a blues guitarist, and you can kind of see why.
In his obit for Touré, Robin Denselow recalled Touré telling him that he played African music, not the blues. In the same obit, the writer recalls Touré telling him:
This music has been taken from here. I play traditional music and I don’t know what blues is. For me, blues is a type of soap powder.
Through his years of recording, he’d grown increasingly concerned that new generations of Malians were unaware of traditional Malian music, and he released albums with traditional musicians, using his fame to bring this music to a wider audience. This grappling with the traditional and the western is apparent in the story of the final decade of his life. In this decade, he grew tired of music, quitting to farm and participate in the local community of Niafunké, his hometown. He was made the town’s mayor, and used the money he made plying his trade (mostly to Westerners) to irrigate the land, and make it suitable for agriculture.
Despite this lengthy absence, he returned in 2005, a year before his death, to release a phenomenal album called In the Heart of the Moon with Toumani Diabaté, considered the world’s prime exponent of the kora, a traditional Malian harp-like stringed instrument, and a member of the first generation of Malian musicians inspired by Touré. More of their recordings from 2005 were released in 2010 as the equally phenomenal Ali and Toumani. The release of these albums meant Touré returned to stage one final time, fighting illness, to deliver his last set of spellbinding performances, like this one.
Ali & Toumani — Old Meets New
The story of Touré and Diabaté deals with that most common of post-colonial tropes — the clash of the traditional with the foreign, the old with the new, and the combination of these creating something that’s both of the here and now, and of the there and then. This clash is a constant feature of the music too, with neither the guitar nor the kora ceding the limelight or hogging it, but both sharing it. Much like the post-colonial culture that birthed them, these albums are a mish-mash of influences that merge into one music that’s at once familiar and foreign.
Despite Touré’s status as a veteran, in many ways it’s the protégé, Diabaté, who represents the traditional, juxtaposing the Malian kora with the decidedly western guitar. The result is something that references an aspect of the ‘sound of Mali’ completely separate from Tinariwen, but also hints at there being no such thing (just as there’s no ‘sound of India’).
Note: Since I started working on this project, there has been a coup d'état in Mali and protests have broken out too. Hope the country sees peace.
