Talking Timbuktu (CD)

Best known in the West for his successful collaborations with Ry Cooder, the Malian performer Ali Farka Toure brought out the African side of American blues music, even as he displayed the influence of players like John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson on his own bluesy guitar work and meandering vocals. Toure stayed true to his roots with calabash and bongos, as well as lyrics sung in various African languages and only occasionally in English. He passed away in March of 2006.

L.A.-based guitarist Ry Cooder learned from the best, getting lessons from legendary bluesman Rev. Gary Davis at an early age. In the mid 1960s, he formed pioneering blues-rock band the Rising Sons with Taj Mahal. When that dissolved, he became an in-demand session player for everyone from Captain Beefheart to Randy Newman. He worked with the Rolling Stones in the late '60s, and nearly became Brian Jones's replacement. Over the years he released numerous quirky solo albums venturing into folk, blues, country, and even Hawaiian music. In the late '90s he instigated the Buena Vista Social Club project, getting veteran Cuban musicians together and presenting their sound to the world via shockingly successful albums, concerts, and a documentary.

• Category:  Music  »  African Music  »  Mali
• Format: CD   Learn more about the CD format using Tower WIKI.
• Release Date: March 29, 1994
• Label: Hannibal
• UPC: 031257138123
• WAPI (Tower ID): 106654523
• Average Customer Review: There are no customer reviews yet. Be the first to write a review!
• Tower.com Sales Rank: #7816 in Music (See Top 100 Music Bestsellers)
• #161243 in African Music (See Top 100 African Music Bestsellers)
• #3 in Mali (See Top 100 Mali Bestsellers)

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Uncut (2/03, p.78) - "...The spirit of spontaneity only serves to emphasize the deep understanding between the two guitarists and the connections between American blues and its African roots..."
Musician (6/94, p.86) - "...Toure's home village of Niafunke nestles between the Sahara and the Niger River, his farm plots carefully cultivated in a precarious symmetry between two inexorable forces. It's fitting that TALKING TIMBUKTU achieves its own quiet balance among several roots and branches of the blues...."
Village Voice (2/28/95) - Ranked #40 in the Village Voice's 1994 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.
Stereo Review (5/94, p.91) - "...a very different tapestry of cross-cultural musical threads that co-exist happily and beautifully..."
Mojo (Publisher) (1/95, p.52) - Included in Mojo's "25 Best Albums of 1994" - "A sprung cushion of boneless rhythms conjured up by the rich ringing West African guitar of Toure...and the loose spiritual blues of Cooder."

Personnel: Ali Farka Toure (vocals, acoustic & electric guitars, 6-string banjo, njarka, percussion), Ry Cooder (acoustic & electric guitars, electric slide guitar, electric mando-guitar, cumbus, mbira, marimba, tamboura, mandolin, bass, samples); Oumar Toure (vocals, congas, bongos); Hamma Sankare (vocals, calabash); Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown (electric guitar, viola); John Patitucci (acoustic bass, bass); Jim Keltner (drums).

Recorded at Ocean Way Recording Studios, Los Angeles, California in September, 1993. Includes liner notes by Nick Gold.

TALKING TIMBUKTU won the 1995 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album.

By the time your average listeners get around to the slow, elemental backbeat of "Ai Du," all of their preconceptions about chickens and eggs, roots and fruits or bluesmen and griots have been blurred and obscured by the enchanting music that makes up TALKING TIMBUKTU.

It's all in there: the droning traditional timbres of Mali in Ali Farka Toure's guitar; the deep, mysterious incantations of the Mississippi delta blues in Ry Cooder's slide work; the soulful backwoods moan of "Gatemouth" Brown's viola; the percolating rhythms of Hamma Sankare and Oumar Toure; and the earthy resonant dance of drummer Jim Keltner and bassist John Patitucci. "Ai Du" sums out to something not unlike the blues or West African music...but it's something else again--like some pan-ethnic folk music for the 21st century.

That's because TALKING TIMBUKTU is an epic cross-cultural super-session that captures the deepest spirit of music and transports it across ethnic and stylistic boundaries without demeaning the gift-giver or the gift. Ali Farka Toure's blissful melodic lines do not adhere to traditional blues form, but rather suggest a kind of pre-blues music of African origins. On a tune such as "Soukora" Toure pours out his heart to his lover, as he and Cooder playfully circle each other with bell-like chords and ornaments that sound like a curtain of electric pearls, while Toure's more vivid attack on "Amandral" echoes phrases evocative of John Lee Hooker. In truth, TALKING TIMBUKTU resists easy description. It is exquisite, mysterious music.

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