Ali Farka Touré

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Ali Farka Touré

Ali Farka Touré (born October 31, 1939 in Kanau , Mali , † March 7, 2006 in Bamako ) was a Malian musician. The "Bluesman of Africa" ​​(also "King of the Desert Blues") was considered one of the most renowned musicians in Africa. The Rolling Stone magazine named him one of the hundred best guitarists of all time.

Life

Ali Farka Touré, born near Timbuktu in the village of Kanau on the Niger , came from a Songhai family. His father died when Touré was an infant. The family moved up the Niger towards Niafunké , 200 kilometers south of Timbuktu. Touré grew up as a Muslim .

Touré began playing Gurkel , a single-string guitar , at the age of eleven . Later the njarka , a single-string fiddle , and the four-string ngoni were added. 1956 saw Ali Farka Touré a performance by the Guinean guitarist Fodéba Keïta . He borrowed a guitar and transferred his traditional technique to the western instrument. At the same time he is learning to play the banjo , drums (percussion) and the accordion .

After Mali's independence in 1960, Modibo Keita , the first head of state, promoted local musicians and artists. Touré performed with the “Troupe 117” cultural ensemble.

In 1968 Touré made his first trip abroad, namely to Sofia , Bulgaria , to an international cultural festival. The Malian musicians played traditional music. Touré played guitar, flute, Djerkel and Njarka. On April 21st he bought his first guitar in Sofia - he had to borrow all the guitars he had played up to then. In the same year, on a visit to Bamako , a friend studying there played him records by James Brown , Jimmy Smith , Albert King and John Lee Hooker . In later years Touré stressed that he was impressed by John Lee Hooker's music, but not influenced.

In 1970 Touré moved to Bamako and began working as a technician for “Radio Mali”. Until 1973 he was a member of the Radio Mali Orchestra. In the early 1970s, a journalist friend advised him to send recordings to Paris . The Paris record company "SonAfric" released seven Ali Farka Tourés LPs - all recorded in Bamako. Despite his dissatisfaction with "SonAfric" - he felt financially left out - he made a name for himself as an influential musician in Mali. Touré was the first to adapt West African styles of music for the western guitar. The themes of his songs were friendship, love, the land, agriculture, the Niger River and fishing, education, health, spirituality and Mali.

1980 Touré returned to Niafunké. Seven years later he left the country for the first time since 1968, gave concerts in Europe and began recording songs with "World Circuit", a British world music label. The well-known British music journalist and BBC presenter Andy Kershaw wrote about Touré's music: "I was quite surprising sent a recording of Ali Farka Touré. I listened to them and was overwhelmed. I wasn't the only one. Of any record I'd ever played on the radio, this generated the most inquiries. With its rhythmically plucked guitar style and the nasal and lonely sounding vocals, this was the West African version of the Delta Blues by Lightnin 'Hopkins or John Lee Hooker . ”(Simon Broughton et al: World Music. )

In 2000 Touré temporarily gave up music in order to be able to devote himself entirely to rice cultivation in Niafunké. He was also involved in local politics - in 2004 he was elected mayor of Niafunké. He was less and less willing to travel. The recordings of “Niafunké” had to be made in 1999 with a mobile recording studio in an abandoned brickworks in Niafunké. He celebrated his greatest success with the American musician Ry Cooder , with whom he recorded the album Talking Timbuktu during one of his rare tours in the United States in 1993 . Talking Timbuktu took first place on almost all world music charts in 1994.

After retiring from the music business in 2000, Touré began recording again for World Circuit in 2004 with kora player Toumani Diabaté . The first part of these recordings was released in 2005, and Touré made public appearances for the first time in years. In 2002 and 2003 Touré appeared in the two music documentaries African Blues and Feel Like Going Home . Ali Farka Touré's last recording, Savane, was number one in the 2006 best list of the world music charts determined by the EBU .

Ali Farka Touré died of bone cancer at the age of 66 . Until shortly before his death, but already seriously ill, he took part in the recordings of his son's debut album, Vieux Farka Touré .

Awards

  • 1995: Grammy for "Best World Music Album" ( Talking Timbuktu )
  • 2006: Grammy for "Best World Music Album (Best Traditional World Music Album)" ( In the Heart of the Moon together with Toumani Diabaté)
  • 2006: Tamani d'hommage

Discography

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Talking Timbuktu (with Ry Cooder )
  CH 23 06/19/1994 (12 weeks)
  UK 44 
silver
silver
04/09/1994 (3 weeks)
In the Heart of the Moon (with Toumani Diabaté )
  UK 87 07/09/2005 (1 week)
Savane
  DE 97 07/28/2006 (1 week)
  AT 55 08/11/2006 (3 weeks)
  CH 99 08/06/2006 (1 week)
  UK 34 07/29/2006 (3 weeks)
Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté (with Toumani Diabaté)
  CH 89 03/14/2010 (1 week)
  UK 49 03/06/2010 (1 week)
  • 1987: Ali Farka Touré
  • 1989: The River
  • 1992: The Source
  • 1994: Talking Timbuktu (with Ry Cooder )
  • 1996: Radio Mali (recorded: 1970–1978)
  • 1999: Niafunké
  • 1999: Afel Bocoum : Alkibar (2 pieces lead guitar)
  • 2002: Boubacar Traoré : Je chanterai pour toi (3 pieces with Ali Farka Touré)
  • 2004: Red & Green ( Red (1984) / Green (1988))
  • 2005: In the Heart of the Moon (with Toumani Diabaté )
  • 2006: Savane (posthumously released album)
  • 2010: Ali and Toumani (published posthumously, recordings from 2005/06 with Toumani Diabaté)

Producer of:

Filmography

Video albums

exhibition

At Documenta 14 in Kassel in 2017, Igo Diarra and La Medina paid tribute to the life and artistic work of Ali Farka Touré with the contribution Studio Ali Farka Touré - Proud and Well . Photographs, record covers, objects and his music were presented. The program also included a workshop and a performance by the Ali Farka Touré Band in the official performance program in the Henschel halls.

literature

  • Simon Broughton, Kim Burton, Mark Ellingham, David Muddyman, Richard Trillo (Eds.): World Music. Metzler, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01532-7 .
  • Graeme Ewens: The Sounds of Africa. Marino, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-927527-68-8 .
  • Luigi Lauer: Agri-culture from Mali. In: Folker! No. 4, 2005.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David Fricke: 100 Greatest Guitarists: David Fricke's Picks. # 76 Ali Farka Touré. In: Rolling Stone . Retrieved October 12, 2016 .
  2. ↑ DE AT CH UK1 UK2
  3. ↑ Music Sales Awards: UK
  4. ^ Igo Diarra and La Medina: Learning from Timbuktu. - Workshop with Igo Diarra and La Medina. - Performance by the Ali Farka Touré Band .
personal data
SURNAME Touré, Ali Farka
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Malian blues musician
DATE OF BIRTH October 31, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Kanau , Mali
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 2006
Place of death Bamako , Mali