Ali Farka Touré

In the 1950s, Ali Farka Touré decided to take up music, much to the great despair of his family. He was the son of noblemen. He first learned the gurkel (traditional African guitar), then the narka (popular violin), which is now a regular instrument in his concerts. In 1956, during a concert by the great Guinean guitarist, Keito Fodeba, Touré discovered the guitar; this was a great revelation for him.

From that point on, his career took off. In the 1960s, he composed, sang and played with the famous Troupe 117, a group created by the Malian government after the country’s independence. During the 1970s, he produced his own recordings at Radio Mali. In 1987 Ali Farka Touré played his first concert in England, which was soon followed by a tour of Europe, Japan and the United States.

In 1990, Touré abandoned music in order to tend to his farm, in his native Timbuktu. His producer managed to convince him otherwise and to return to his guitar; two years later, he recorded the groundbreaking “Talking Timbuktu” with Ry Cooder. It bagged the prestigious Grammy Award in 1993. And in 2005, the 66-year-old repeated the feat with the CD “In the heart of the moon”, a moving collaboration with kora virtuoso Toumani Diabaté. By then, he had become Mayor of his home town of Niafunke where he had set up one of Mali’s most modern studios.

I last spoke to the gentle giant in January 2006. Severely weakened by a cancer of the prostate, Touré softly declined my request to see him in his home in Bamako. “But I am getting better, I just need a little rest and you’ll see me back to best,” he insisted with his characteristic optimism. Tragically, it was not to be, as the cancer he had fought by modern and traditional methods finally claimed the life of one of the continent’s most independent-minded, talented and proud musicians.

March 2006

Daniel Brown

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