Label: World Circuit / Nonesuch
Blues
Savane, the great African guitarist and bluesman Ali Farka Touré's final solo studio album, was recorded in his native Mali toward the end of his life, when the artist knew his days were numbered. He spent his last years in his home village of Niafunké, concentrating on farming and family matters, jamming with local musicians of an evening. This impassioned, roots-drenched, mostly acoustic valedictory finds the Maestro's stalking rhythms and high-noon-at-the-crossroads, dusty desert-to-delta vocals in no less than life-summing form. "Soya" (track 5) seems to stand still in a million directions, while "Hanana Soko" (track 9) features a searing njarka fiddle spinning delirious circles around its throaty accompanying percussion. Pee Wee Ellis (sax) and Little George Sueref (harmonica) each manage to make strong impressions while adhering to the groove at hand. Afel Boucoum, a talented younger musician who has been mentioned as Touré's most likely successor (as if such a thing were possible!), graces "Njarou," the last tune. The other players are also at the top of their game, as fluttering ngoni (a West African spike lute) riffs weave in and out and airy female vocals float like a breeze off the river Niger. There are reports that Touré senior sat in on his son's upcoming album and scads of archival material will undoubtedly materialize. But his unsentimental, voluptuously masculine, spirit-guided magic is captured at its best, for all time, in this magnificent farewell.
By Christina Roden.
**
One immediate response, when presented with these two albums—the first posthumous release by the extraordinary Malian guitarist and singer Ali Farka Toure, and the first ever release by his son, Vieux Farka Toure—might be to see in the albums the passing of the "desert blues" flame from one generation to the next. In a sense, of course, that is indeed what Savane and Vieux Farka Toure represent, for the transmission of tradition from father to son is established practice amongst West African musicians—and Ali duly anoints his son's debut with two cameo appearances, one of which is amongst the album's highlights.
But such a perspective would be an oversimplification. While Vieux is demonstrably well versed in his father's music, what we are actually hearing is the emergence of a rather different aesthetic, one that seeks to include music from beyond Africa—notably reggae, rock and funk—at its core. Just how successful Vieux will be in this endeavour remains to be seen. He will need to harness not only invention but also strength of character, for many of his father's fans will be hoping for a more or less unbroken continuation of Ali's style, and the pressures on young Vieux to deliver will be considerable. One thinks of Ravi Coltrane, Femi Kuti and Jeff Buckley, for instance.
There is, however, already much to enjoy in Vieux's tentative first steps towards singularity. The majestic Savane, meanwhile, is indisputably his father's late-period masterpiece...
Although enthusiastically embraced by world music fans since the late 1980s, first as a shape-shifting Delta blues guitarist—for the resonances with Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker were indeed spookily powerful—and later as a stylist in his own right, Ali's attitude towards Western acceptance was always ambivalent. On the very cusp of major international breakthrough, following the release of collaborations with Taj Mahal (The Source, World Circuit, 1993) and Ry Cooder (Talking Timbuktu, World Circuit, 1994), Toure seemed deliberately to shoot his chances of international stardom in the foot—by retiring from the recording studio for almost five years, before returning with the profoundly Mali-centric album Niafunke (World Circuit) in 1999. All he seemed to want from the West were sufficient funds to acquire some high-grade recording equipment and improve the quality of life in Niafunke, his home village. Once he had them, his career priority became managing their effective expenditure on the ground.
So to hail the intensely traditional Savane as a return to the roots, as some have done, is nonsensical, for Ali never left them. From his earliest albums, made in the mid 1970s and featuring just voice, acoustic guitar and ngoni (Malian lute), through the Mahal and Cooder projects and on to Savane, Toure played in exactly the same way. His adoption of electric guitar was to enable a sonically enriched reading of traditional ngoni music, not a conscious attempt at overseas breakthrough. Toure's music got deeper and better over the years, but it never fundamentally changed.
Savane is, however, his most perfectly realised celebration of Malian deep roots music. Sung almost exclusively in regional languages, at its core are Toure's rough diamond guitar and the throbbingly percussive ngonis of Mama Sissoko and Bassekou Kouyate. Everything else, and there's plenty of magic going on in the percussion section, is supporting cast, except perhaps Ali's voice. The rolling, tumbling riffs that the three players create together, and the solo variations they take turns contributing—Sissoko on bass ngoni, Kouyate on alto—are at the heart of practically every piece. Fanga Diawara's abrasive njarka violin adds to the atmosphere on three tracks.
Guest appearances from the London-based harmonica player Little George Sueref and tenor saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis, who are each briefly featured on three tunes, probably at the suggestion of producer Nick Gold, are enjoyable, but decorative features only. Ellis' playing is nicely sensitive to the setting, while Sueref tends to charge ahead in a generic, Little Walter-ish fashion.
Savane almost certainly won't be Ali Farka Toure's last album—other sessions are in the can for future release—but it may well prove to be his most enduring.
By Chris May.
**
Toure recorded Savane in the Malian capital of Bamako, as part of a three-disc project dubbed the Hotel Mande Sessions, after the studio in which the albums were cut. Savane is the last, perhaps most eloquent, installment. In concept and execution, the sessions recall teh magical combination of spontaneity and virtuosity that marked the debut releases from the Buena Vista Social Club. Toure offers reverberating, incantatory vocals to accompany his lean, hypnotically repetitive guitar lines.
**
Ali Farka Toure- Guitar, vocals, Bass Drum, Bongos, Percussion;
Mama Sissoko, Dassy Sarre, Bassekou Kouyate- Ngoni;
Fanga Diawara- Njarka;
Little George Sueref- Harmonica;
Pee Wee Ellis- Tenor Sax;
Yves Wernert, Etienne Mbappe, Sonny- Bass;
Massambou Wele Diallo- Bolon;
Fain Duenas- Percussion;
Alou Coulibaly- Water Calabash;
Ali Magassa- Guitar, Backing Vocals;
Souleye Kane- Calabash, Backing Vocals;
Oumar Toure- Congas, Backing vocals;
Hammer Sankare, Ali Magassa, Afel Bocoum, Brehima Toure, Ramata Diakite- Backing Vocals.
**
01.Erdi
02.Inchana Massina
03.Beto
04.Savane
05.Soya
06.Penda Yoro
07.Machengoidi
08.Ledi Coumbe
09.Hanana
10.Soko Yhinka
11.Gambari Didi
13.N'Jarou
**
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