Talking Toure

I first heard Ali Farka Toure play in 1998, by way of a CD that I dredged up from the cheapo bin at a video 'n' music store in Gallup, New Mexico. "Oh, some African music. That'll be nice," was my only thought at the time. Little did I know...

As I played the disc, I was soon drawn in by the utter familiarity of the rhythms and lyrics -- despite the fact that the songs are sung in regional West African dialects.* This was music that I'd heard before, and which was being drawn up from deep within the mnemonic archive.

I found a few more of Toure's recordings, as well as other traditional music on the kora and balafon, over the subsequent months. I signed on to travel with Afropop Worldwide on a tour of Mali in February 2000. One of the highlights of the trip was to be a stay at Ali Farka Toure's compound in Niafunke, near Tombouctou (Timbuktu).

Some time later, word came that Ali had to have emergency eye surgery in France, and he would not be able to participate in the tour. This was disappointing of course, since his presence was the main reason I'd signed on... but I chose to stay registered (despite some paperwork and payment snafus that had occured).

When the time came to depart, I was caught up in some high anxiety (mostly about flying). I had to stave off intense panic during the flight to New York. On the evening that I was to depart from JFK, I was told that my Mali visa had alreay expired and that I wouldn't be allowed to board the flight to Brussels. Confused and worn down from anxiety and tension since my arrival, I simply got on a Greyhound and went home.

Several months passed. I signed on to work with AmeriCorps in an afterschool program in Columbus, Ohio. On occasion, the site staff would play the wide-ranging music we owned for the children in the program (most of whom were African-American). When I played Ali Farka Toure's eponymous recording from the 80s (with a red cover and a photo from his compound; the same disc I bought in NM), it was roundly criticized by some of the older kids as my "African country music," which I found hilarious [and which is pretty much spot-on, when one considers the connections between West African music and Mississippi Delta blues**].

Anyhow, a week or so later, one of my teammates asked me about the African musician whose CD I'd played before. She couldn't quite recall the name, and I guessed Toure.

"Yeah, that's him. He's playing at the Southern Theatre tonight."

Stiff pause, slack jaw. "What?"

And then she showed me the ad for WCBE's world music concert series, and there was Ali's face and the date and time for that evening. I was struck silent and then began to nut up, worried that there would be no tickets left. i ran to the office, dialed up the theatre and got two tickets for my lovely Leo companion at the time.

We had dinner before the show and I explained the whole saga mentioned above. Then we went to the performance hall. At the appointed time, out comes the deejay who hosted the world music program. He related the main bits of Ali Farka Toure's career, and then winds up his intro by mentioning, for those [like me] who didn't know, that Ali was about to retire from touring, and that that night's show was to be his last in the US.

Head jerks, jaw drops. And then the show began. And it was fantastic. And all throughout, as I quietly sang along and blissedly beamed, I kept going back to how I hadn't been able to get to Mali from Ohio... and six months later, there was Ali Farka Toure, 200 feet in front of me, playing in downtown Columbus.

Destiny?

Well, who can say? I only went into this retelling because I just bought the recent reissue of Ali Farka Toure's "Red" album, along with the simply titled "Green." So now, with translations in the liner notes, I can find out what I've been listening to for all these years.


* One of the dialects is Peul, or Fula, the language of the nomadic people from whom my father's side of the family is descended, according to my father many years before I even thought to listen to African music.

** See Martin Scorcese's "Feel Like Going Home" from the PBS series The Blues.