Ali Farka Touré

One of the most widely celebrated West African performers of the 1990s, Ali Farka Touré was repeatedly labeled “the African John Lee Hooker,” a phrase that must have grown tiresome for both musicians. The resemblance nevertheless held substance and was hardly disparaging. Touré, who also performed on calabash and bongos, favored the same low-pitched vocals and midtempo, foot-stomping grooves that characterized Hooker and comparable American blues artists such as Lightnin’ Hopkins, frequently employing sparse accompaniment.

His singing was gentler than Hooker’s, and the overall mood of his songs carried a milder character. Commercial reach on Hooker’s scale remained limited, however, because Touré performed in multiple languages and only sporadically in English. As he explained to Option, his lyrics addressed “education, work, love, and society.” Any sonic likeness to Hooker probably arose not from deliberate imitation but from their independent roots in African rhythmic and musical practices that stretch back generations.

Touré was nearing fifty when a self-titled album introduced him to the expanding Western world-music audience in the late 1980s. He subsequently toured regularly throughout North America and Europe while recording often, occasionally alongside Taj Mahal and members of the Chieftains. In 1990 he withdrew from music to concentrate on his rice farm, yet his producer persuaded him to return for 1994’s Talking Timbuktu, a collaboration with Ry Cooder. That release earned his strongest acclaim, including a Grammy for Best World Music Album, and demonstrated that partnerships between Third World and First World artists need not soften non-Western elements to gain broad recognition. Success nevertheless proved exhausting, prompting another retreat to agricultural work.

Five years passed before another American release appeared; the silence ended in 1999 with Niafunké, which abandoned guest musicians in favor of a direct return to his own musical origins. Touré again withdrew from public view. In 2005 Nonesuch issued Red & Green, combining two early-1980s albums for their first compact-disc release as a two-disc set. In the Heart of the Moon also appeared that year. On March 7, 2006, Touré succumbed to bone cancer after a prolonged struggle, though he finished one final recording beforehand. Savane was issued posthumously in July 2006. Unplanned sessions recorded in London a year earlier with Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté later surfaced as the 2010 album Ali & Toumani.