Capsule Music Review - Ali Farka Toure

Ali Farka Toure - Savane

If you had the fortitude to go through my previous capsule music reviews you might have noticed a high percentage of records I didn't like. This is partly because I was holding back reviews of any record that had a good chance of making my top ten. Now that I have settled on my top ten (which I will publish on February 11 in conjunction with the Grammies), I can review the other records I liked.

Ali Farka Toure (there should be an accent on the "e", but I can't figure out how to do that on this software) is a West African guitarist (who died in 2006) sometimes referred to as the African John Lee Hooker. I find it difficult to make critical evaluations of "world music" artists because I lack a command of the criteria necessary to judge artists outside the Western popular music tradition. The difficulty with Toure is reduced slightly by his strong resemblance to the American blues tradition. Listening to Toure, it's easy to see how African musical traditions were incorporated into the blues, making Toure (until recently) a living time capsule of American traditional music. Of course, it is likely that Toure was in turn influenced by American blues artists, muddying the waters somewhat.

With that in mind, this is an essential record for anyone with an interest in folk music, blues, and guitar. I am unfamiliar with Toure's previous, apparently substantial output, but this record is filled with brilliant and startling guitar work that is simultaneously both familiar and alien. The lyrics are not sung in English, but that is no obstacle to getting the general emotional drift. The compositions tend to be somewhat static, resulting in a droning quality, which is by turns both mesmerizing and dull.