f80 Blue Mali
From February 1988: Ian Anderson unravels some of the Ali Farka Touré enigma.
F
lashback time, to Folk Roots 37, and my review of the album Ali Farka Touré on the French label Disques Espérance. “He really does make quite remarkable music and I would dearly like to know what the precise influences are on it. He sings in the traditional style for that part of Africa, and his guitar work is obviously from the same stream as the ancient styles… but why does the whole record start, tantalisingly, with the guitar riff from My Girl?” Not long after this, Andy Ker- shaw started the subsequently frequent practice of playing the Malian enigma’s records back-to-back with those by blues legend John Lee Hooker. Here we had a grade A mystery cult hero in the making!
None of us dared expect that we would know any more about him than the blurred photograph that appeared on the record cover, of a robed man in his forties, surrounded by his family in a West African compound. But we didn’t count on the intrepid Anne Hunt of Arts Worldwide. In the summer of 1987, she took off to West Africa in search of two great men – the kora player Jali Musa Jawara, maker of what some consider to be the best record in the entire history of the universe, and Ali Farka Touré.
In Bamako, capital of Mali, she discov- ered that the musician she sought was miles away across a country virtually devoid of roads. But a message broadcast on the radio brought Ali Farka Touré to find her, and that meeting brought him to Britain last September. He was, to put it mildly, sen- sational; a handsome man with a mighty stage presence, whose wonderful voice and guitar playing somehow capture the spirits of both West Africa and rural Mississippi.
While here, he recorded an album for
World Circuit that is due for imminent release. He’ll be back in February for a joint tour with Jali Musa Jawara, and stay- ing on in Britain until the summer – so British audiences will have ample opportu- nity to share the man’s magic. Though not, it appears, for very much longer – he’s intent on giving up his musical career by the time he’s fifty. This startling revelation surfaced during the course of our inter- view, which took place early in his last visit.
Before the interview, we’d already (to everybody’s great relief) discovered that
he’d heard records of American blues and soul musicians, and had apparently even shared the stage with an impressed John Lee Hooker during a visit to France. As it turned out, though, the musical similari- ties are by no means a simple matter of such direct influences. But this we were to discover later on. Naturally, the first ques- tion was about how, since he didn’t come from one of the traditional families of hereditary musicians known as griots – a maverick status that he shares with the fabulous Salif Keita – he started playing music at all.
“I
was born in 1939 at Gour- ma-Rharusse, that’s my native village. I stayed there until 1946 when I left to go to Niafunké with my mother,
as my father had died when I was two. That’s in the Timbuktu region. I spent almost all my childhood there. I was enrolled in school that same year, but I couldn’t follow school so after two months I left and continued to study the Koran until I was eight – at least I could say my prayers correctly!”
“In 1949 or ’50 I started to play the monocorde, a traditional guitar. I didn’t see myself heading for a griot’s life, I learned it purely for pleasure.”
His family wasn’t pleased. “Never! But I played it, as I saw it as a gift of mine. If I hadn’t seen it as a gift I would never have been allowed to do it. In our ethnic group we have griots who know our family well and spend time with us, and all events are controlled by these people so if one of them had objected to my playing I would have to stop. So in 1951 one of them objected and I was taken to be treated and cured. I don’t know how they did it.”
“I kept the same instrument as a sou- venir until 1957, by which time I’d got interested in the guitar. But I didn’t know how to play, I didn’t have a teacher. There was a nurse in our village called Mam- madou Sylla who had a guitar. For the first time I had someone to tell me how to hold it and how to play. And so we lived togeth- er for two months, and then he got trans- ferred and left with his guitar. I managed to get by, learned a bit, but remained mostly in the dark until 1956 when I got to know about people from Guinea who came to Mali for a festival in Bamako.”
“So I was very happy and made a firm decision that I’d become a guitarist one day. That was how I found myself with my guitar at a ‘bi-annual youth event’, what you call a festival. Every area came with its own speciality, that was part of the whole idea. I went to get known as a guitarist, which has followed me up until today. I managed to keep going!”
“Being involved in music didn’t make me think that I’d taken it up for life – it was just one episode, like a love affair I’d fallen into. I think there’s a real need for that in one’s life, though it’s too late for me now. I’ve understood that I’ve been able to express myself very well through music but I think that in 1989 I’ll stop if all goes according to plan. I’ll abandon music.”
That seems a terrible shame…
“I’ve made up my mind. I can’t contin- ue, firstly because of my age. What I’d really like would be to perhaps have a pupil. The little I have known I can perhaps teach to others. Also there’s my family – very big, very well known, very noble and proud. I personally didn’t care about my dignity but in my village to be a profes- sional musician is a low status, trade, except in your youth, and one for the gri- ots. Otherwise, what would the griots have left? They have their rights too. I have got to stop soon. The griots can’t make me, but unless I do there is no more dignity left for me.”
“The griots are a group that know everything about music. The monocorde is made only for sacred rituals and I can’t say more. The depth and breadth is so great and my mouth is too small to explain it all! It’s something purely concerned with Africa, for Africa and not outside of Africa. I have to keep that secret.”
“I love music. God has given me the gift of being able to invent and compose it, and I think that’s a big thing! But at a particular age I prefer to abandon that and spend more time with my family, the Koran and the mosque. I’d really like to continue on the right path.”
I asked him when he first started trav- elling with his music, and recording in France. “Because of music, I left Mali to travel on July 23rd 1968. I went to Bulgar- ia, to Sofia, and then to Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Helsinki and final-
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