It is Sunday morning after the SA state election, that was won by the Rann-led ALP as expected. We've been listening to Ali Farka Toure --the CD he made with Ry Cooder called Talking Timbuktu.

It's very beautiful, bluesy world music that explores the nexus between American blues and west African music and ilustrates the way that American blues has been shot through with African forms That particular musical debt is more often acknowledged than heard, but it is highlighted in this
this interview by Toure for Acoustic Guitar in 1995.

Toure says of his music:

My music was always part of my work of education, love, evolution, and criticisms. I take the tradition, and I translate all that I can of the music of my country. I find an indigenous guitarist who gives me the tunes, and I learn them and practice. The words are already there, they are legends that I know. So I only adapt, I translate that which has been dictated to me by the old people. I speak nine languages, because I am there for everybody, not only for one individual. Honey is not good in only one mouth. And that is what has made me popular and successful, because I play for everyone.

"The first time I heard John Lee Hooker's music, I recognized it immediately. I argued with people, I said 'This is not possible, how can this exist in America?' Because these are not Western tunes. Not at all. This music is 100% African, and particularly from Mali. The tunes he plays are some of them in the Tamashek style, some in the Bozo style, some in Songhai style and some in Peul. John Lee Hooker does not know the sources of his music. I respect him and appreciate his genius as the translator of African music in the United States, but my music is the roots and the trunk, and he is only the branches and the leaves. These are our tunes, and he plays them without understanding them."

Comments

Posted by: Michael | March 20, 2006 12:12 PM

Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson | March 20, 2006 4:35 PM