Ali Farka Toure

Artscape, July 22

2000-08-02-feedback3

The bookings at Artscape have improved dramatically in recent years, as over-the-hill oldies acts have been largely replaced by eccentric legends of rootsy genres. At 2 P.M. on the festival's second day, for example, festivalgoers were forced to choose between Earl King, the greatest songwriter New Orleans has ever produced, and Ali Farka Toure, the John Lee Hooker of West Africa. Since King visits Baltimore once a year and Toure once a decade, I opted for the man from Mali.

Toure was the Buena Vista Social Club of 1994. As the Cuban senior citizens did later, Toure released an album with Ry Cooder that year and became a favorite of public-radio stations everywhere. Unlike the Cubans, though, Toure didn't capitalize on this breakthrough. After one North American tour, he returned to his hometown on the Niger River. Five years later, Toure finally released a follow-up album, Niafunke, named after his hometown and recorded there with local musicians.

The songs from that new album dominated his set at Artscape. Beneath the stone tower of the Maryland Institute, College of Art's train-station building, Toure prowled the stage in a purple batik outfit and a black flat-brimmed hat. Backed by two percussionists, a bassist, and three male vocalists, the bandleader plucked out mesmerizing electric-guitar lines with his thumb and index finger.

He almost never played a full chord; instead, he broke his minor-key harmonies down into single-note arpeggios. As he circled through these chord changes, however, the harmonies never seemed to resolve, leaving the listener waiting for the satisfaction that seemed tantalizing close but never seemed to arrive. Far from being frustrating, this approach proved exhilarating, for the music never settled into a predictable pattern but always seemed alive with possibilities.

Unlike most Western guitar heroes, Toure never played particularly fast; his picking proceeded as deliberately, as hypnotically, as the rising-and-falling vocal harmonies that accompanied the guitar. At times, the droning, polyrhythmic sound reminded one of such north Mississippi guitarists and singers as Fred McDowell, R.L. Burnside, and Junior Kimbrough. If Kimbrough was the most African of blues guitarists, Toure is the bluesiest of African guitarists.

For his final number, Toure put aside his electric and acoustic guitars and picked up the njarka violin, a foot-long single-string instrument with a gourd resonator and an arched stick for a bow. On this ancient Malian instrument he played the exact same sort of unresolved, minor-key arpeggios he had played on his guitar. For the North Americans in the audience, here was a chance to glimpse back into time and see where perhaps the blues--and by extension, most American music--began.

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