Ali Farka Touré: The enigmatic life of Africa’s greatest guitarist
“For some people, when you say Timbuktu, it is like the end of the world, but that is not true. I am from Timbuktu, and I can tell you we are right at the heart of the world.” – Ali Farka Touré (1939 – 2006)
As the world faces up to the existential crisis of climate change, one region has captured the battle in the amber of art better than any other. The challenges of an existence in tumultuous transition is the crux that causes Saharan blues to be so intoxicatingly invigorating, and at the heart of it is one man: Ali Farka Touré. He put his finger on this hive himself. “Mali is a very social society,” he proclaimed. “We share everything. I think sharing our resources in music forces us to collaborate more, play with other people more, share ideas more.” His life was one big benevolent act of sharing his skills.
His guitar playing is like poetry—it alleviates the hardships of life with a sense of the beauty of deliverance. And he knew hardships all too well. As a boy, he was his mother’s tenth son. However, he grew up as her only boy. None of his brothers survived infancy. His father died while serving in the French Army in 1940 when he was one. Despite this loss, his mother’s love and fortified sense of humanity shone through. She called her beloved boy Farka, which is ‘donkey’ in Malian, a symbol of his tenacious desire to stick by her side. As he would later joke: “Let me make one thing clear: I’m the donkey that nobody climbs on!”
Stubbornness would permeate his musical journey too. In Malian society, he was born into the Noble caste forbidden from playing music which was a task limited to the lower ‘Griot’ caste. Needless to say, he disregarded this tradition and built his own monochord from a discarded tin can and fishing wire. He would abscond away from the glare of adults with his friends, head into the sands, and jam under the chandelier of Saharan stars.
Nevertheless, this playing was always sequestered towards the realm of private fancy as he went out to work in the world. Then in 1956, when he was 17, he fortuitously witnessed the Guinea Nation Ballet perform and he was so awestruck that he found himself determined to master the guitar for good. This was during an era of liberation for Mali whereby the political status quo encouraged the development of culture. The regions would come together in talent competitions and the unifying force of music was readily apparent to our young hopeful hero. So much so, in fact, that he learnt to sing in seven languages.
Touré eventually landed a job as a sound engineer at Radio Mali. Therein he made full use of the recording equipment, and, in time, made a string of his own records. He sent these off to labels in France. For years, these albums were either cast to the ash heap of history or just about peaked their head into the obscurity of the dated label of the ‘world music’ section.
Then in 1986 that all changed after Andy Kershaw went hunting for albums in Paris and picked up on the beauty of Touré’s soul-extolling tunes. Slowly but surely his star grew, and his prodigious talents were recognised around the world. He found himself recording with the likes of Ry Cooder and was praised by rock ‘n’ roll heroes like Robert Plant. From then on, his influence blossomed, even in his homeland. And soon, desert blues was a cultural bloom that made the Sahara look like an oasis.
All the while, if you asked Touré what he did for a living, he’d tell you that he was a farmer. In fact, as his fame continued to grow, he stepped away from music to cultivate rice for the far-flung rural community of Niafunke instead. Four years of hard toil later, Touré was elected as mayor of the 53 villages in the area. From this position, he piled his music royalties into setting up an irrigation system. When he died two years later, he was not merely remembered as Africa’s greatest guitarist whose music helped to liberate a scene that just might be the most vital in the world, but also a hero in the true sense. As Bob Dylan once said: “A hero is someone who understands the responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
His legacy in this regard proves transcendent. Musically, perhaps the epitome of his work lies with the album In the Heart of the Moon which he crafted with fellow guitar virtuoso Toumani Diabaté. It might not be the most well-known record in the world but quietly its reverberations are beginning to be felt as the stirring sound’s seismic impact on the epicentre of the Sahara begins to weave into the global sonic consciousness.
For the album, the two Malian legends added an infusion of impetus to the pioneering force of bands like Tinariwen and helped to inspire the next generation of Taureg people to seek solace away from the disruption of political turmoil and climate change in the coracle of sanctity that music represents in the region of sand and blood, by offering up some of the most technical and enchanting guitar work ever recorded.
However, that exultant triumph forever fuelled by despair sadly was no longer about overcoming it in 2012 when tragedy overwhelmed it. Al Qaeda and other extremist groups began to infiltrate the Malian region. It became a no-travel zone for foreign tourists whose money was vital to sustaining the music festivals and bands, and in mid-2012 the region had fallen to an extremist regime. Sharia law was implemented, and music became a crime punishable by death. Even Tinariwen’s guitarist was captured and held captive for ten days before managing to escape and flee Mali.
The positive twist to this seemingly damning ending is that Touré’s music had opened up a world beyond Mali for the beleaguered desert blues musicians. Thus, many of those who had enjoyed the embalming bounty of the region’s spiritual blues were ready to give back to those suffering. Glastonbury hosted a record number of Malian acts, Damon Albarn and Brian Eno travelled to regions where exiled musicians were recording and, in the process, helped to provide a platform for mighty bands like Songhoy Blues. And now, Saharan Blues is bigger than ever. As Touré said, music is about sharing ideas and despite dower circumstances, the donkey-like tenacity of music in the region is a legacy he would have adored.
In fact, despite everything, it is only getting bigger. The all-female band Les Filles de Illighadad, fronted by the Tuareg’s first female guitarist, Fatou Seidi Ghali, even recently wandered into Washington D.C., with instruments tucked under their arms to perform at the US Library of Congress. Music might be no longer sound-off in Mali, but Touré’s reinvigorated mobilisation of an entire culture is definitely still with us.
Just as he once boldly scurried away to strum on his monochord, when Ghali addressed the Library of Congress she described the incorporation of the traditional female tende drum with guitar sounds as a way of, “asserting the power of women to innovate using the roots of traditional music.”
The official website for the first Saharan music festival that Touré helped to establish might now read, “The festival in the desert is currently in exile due to the unrest in Mali. Many of the Malian artists that have performed at the festival will be a part of this global experience so keep an eye out for Mali bands coming throughout the globe,” but you wouldn’t put it past their globetrotting ways to return to a more peaceful home soon and bring unity to the region once more.
After all, Saharan blues is the soaring sound of a people bloodied but unbowed. Touré proved this with his own life of defiance and beauty—a humble conquest reflected in his lyrical sounds. He is proof that within the ever-expansive desert of hardships, the human sanctity that desert blues encapsulates is a minuscular but mighty oasis of hope, comfort and bliss, inviolable to all that may come. The shimmering mirage of Touré magically plucked music remains a paragon of that.
