"Ali Aoudy"

These two 1980s albums, packaged as a set, and available in some cases for the first time on CD, take the listener right to the heart of the Ali Farka Toure, “African Blues” phenomenon.  The earlier set, here called Red, comes from 1984, and it is the album that BBC broadcaster Andy Kershaw chanced across in a London bargain bin at a time when nobody in the knew a thing about Toure and his northern Malian, desert musical traditions.  Kershaw was promptly seduced by the music’s “bluesiness.”  Pre-figurings?  Echoes?  Influences?  (Toure was playing a guitar, after all.)  Those questions would be debated endlessly, but what mattered most was the unbelievably compelling nature of the performances.  
 

The first track, “La Drogue,” a soulful cautionary song about alcohol, said it all with its spare intertwining of elliptical guitar lines over a droning bass note, clopping calabash percussion, and Farka’s razor-edged vocal, shadowed in unison by an unnamed accompanist.  By the end of the next track, “Ali Aoudy,” which shifts from an ambling 4/4 to a positively hypnotic 6/8, the spell is cast.  Song after song, from the rowdy, 12/8 of “Cherie,” to the seductive 4/4 shuffle of “Timbindy,” these recordings strip Farka’s guitar playing down to its ingenious essentials.  No other recording so clearly reveals his brilliance as a solo, fingerstyle player.  Guitarists wanting to decode Farka’s inimitable style will find this volume in particular a must.

Lyrics are also fascinating. Many are about love, including “Baliky Lalo,” which considers an old man who leers at young girls.  A second male singer sings the part of the girl.  A couple of songs verge on politics.  “Ali Aoudy” praises a cohort of ’s first president, Modibo Keita, deposed in a coup in 1968.  Keita’s successor was the military dictator Moussa Traore, and one can imagine him being uncomfortable with lines from “Katiné:”  “Forgive me, my elders, but this is how the song goes.  The leaders want lies.  They have no pity.  That’s why this country can’t progress…I’m afraid.  I’m afraid.”  Elsewhere, Farka’s legendary roundaboutness, word play, and reliance on ambiguous proverbs leave doubt as to his ultimate meaning, but in this song, he seems to lay out a clear line of protest, hardly typical of any Malian music during this era. 

The songs on Green are similarly rich, though a little less spare.  This set was first released in 1988, and made it to the international market on the 1990 Shanchie release African Blues.  The off-kilter lope and wailing vocal of “Devele Wague,” and the subtle, sinuous groove of “N’timbara,” a mystical love song, are standouts.  Most of these songs also feature a low-tuned, traditional lute, a thrumming presence that is more rhythmic than melodic.  This instrument intensifies the sound, creating great rhythmic action, for example, on the praise song “Patenere.”  They make for a slightly less freewheeling guitar style than that heard on Red, and complicate the task of decoding Toure’s guitar style, but you get a feel for where this one-of-a-kind artist is heading.  

New work from Toure is in the works, including an unusual collaboration with kora genius Toumani Diabate. In the meantime, this release is a treasure.  For sheer emotional impact, it is unlikely that anything yet to come will truly top the small masterpieces on Red. 

Contributed by: Banning Eyre for www.afropop.org