Track Listing

1. Ali's Here
2. Allah Uya
3. Mali Dje
4. Saukare
5. Hilly Yoro
6. Tulumba
7. Instumental
8. ASCO
9. Jangali Famata
10. Howkouna
11. Cousins
12. Pieter Botha

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37590 in Music
• Released on: 1999-06-22
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .27 pounds

Amazon.com
Ali Farka Toure's first album since his 1994 collaboration with Ry Cooder, Talking Timbuktu, makes a convincing argument for the adage that home is where the art is. Recorded in an abandoned brick edifice located between Toure's extensive rice fields and the Sahara-bordering village of Niafunké, Mali, this is the guitarist's most purely African album yet. Local percussionists, a sensuous village chorus, and a lonely one-stringed njarka violin accompany Toure here, replacing the Western guests who've tended to stilt his prior records. More relaxed and less gratuitously ornamental than before (especially when he plays acoustically), Toure digs deeply into spare, loping pentatonic grooves that extend beyond the usual John Lee Hooker blues comparisons into territory older, richer, and more folkloric (and Islamic) than earlier records have approached. --Richard Gehr

Customer Reviews

In his own element
Ali Farka Toure is in his own element on this recording, offering a stripped down version of his plaintive music that evokes so many comparisons. Toure himself put the shoe on the other foot by saying that John Lee Hooker is a Malian at heart. One can hear a resonance in these two voices, but the music is very different. Toure comes from a strong Islamic as well as African tradition, and this music very much reflects that.

Toure was disappointed by some of the collaborative efforts he did, Taj Mahal in particular. He had a hard time fitting his music into the Blues mold producers wanted him to do. Scorcese makes the same mistake in his opening film in the PBS series, getting Toure to play along with Corey Harris, but you can see that his heart is not in it. Toure is very much his own man and this CD is the most representative of his personal feelings about music.

African music first- and listen to it that way
The most important thing to understand about this recording is the genuineness of Toure's claim to be be playing Malian music first, and American blues second. Toure is not the Malian John Lee Hooker. He plays the music of his land, with it's time, steps, paces, thoughts and wishes. It is trite and simple to say that Blues comes from Africans therefore . . . Toure is a deceptively simple introduction to African music. If you allow yourself to be lulled, fooled into thinking you have heard this before and it fits into your pre-built structure of music, you are missing some, maybe not most, of the spirit of this album. It rewards opening out. One day every listener, true listener, will allow themselves to hear the foreigness of this amazing album, and the rewards will have just begun.

Outstanding!
Ali Farka Toure's "Niafunke" is one great album, showcasing the West African approach to the guitar, and proving that Toure is getting better with each passing year. It was genius to avoid the homogenization of "world" music by recording this CD in Mali, near home, with local musicians. The music can be described as a sort of "Sahara blues", a mix of North and West African traditional music and American blues, but there's much more to it than that. Play this CD, be taken away by it, listen to the voices and instruments (African drums and strings), and you'll agree with Toure, who says that "Timbuktu [is] right at the heart of the world."