Customer Reviews

Savane

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

One of the incredible tragedies in Music this year is the passing of Ali Farka Toure. It is impossible to exagerate his importance to African, Malian, Blues, World musics. He is as seminal figure as anyone in any discipline. Last year he recorded the mystically beautiful IN THE HEART OF THE MOON with Toumani Diabete, and this record as well as Diabete's magical SYMMETRY ORCHESTRA recording just out were recorded nearly simultaneously in the same hotel as the MOON sessions.
Toure's hypnotic guiatr work is set to haunting effect alongside ngoni players like Mama Sissoko, American sax player and Van Morrison collaborator Pee Wee Ellis, calabash virtuouso Souleye Kane, and percussionists like Oumar Toure. This is the cream of Mali's traditional music set, and some of the best international sidemen you can have. For Ellis, it must have been a career highpoint to join in such august company and he plays as though this may never happen again.
And sadly, it will not. These are love songs, songs about life along a river, songs of politics and wisdom that ring with an authenticity that almost all of today's music lacks. There are few if any African-Americans whose records could hold a candle to this, let alone white, Carribbean, or any other ethnicity. This is music born of a culture that transcends those identifying markers and reaches into that which is quintessentially human in all of us. Considering that Human Life likely started in these environs, that should not be surprising. That Toure can articulate what is so primally essential to life and bring forth such brilliant contributions from his collaborators set this effort on a plain few have even thought about reaching.
This is the blues. Close your eyes, forget the language differences, and it is the voice of John Lee Hooker, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Asie Payton crying out from the Delta, from the northern Mississippi fields. It is a call that began with the dawn of man and continues to call him home. It is the struggle and the passion, the poetic and the political, the directions in the human soul that seek peace, love, justice a safe and clean home, a regard for the planet as a nuturing place instead of a field to be exploited. And in what may yet prove to be his most prophetic call, the last song on the CD, "N'Jarou" tells the story of a brave man who resisted both the tyranny of white colonialization and the the chains of expansionsit Islam to be true to what he knew in his heart and soul. In a Greek context, we might call this Socratic. In any context, it is profound.
This is not a dance record. It is meant to be listened to thoughtfully. While "Savane" speaks literally about a drought and the damage wrought thereby in the savannahs, metaphorically, Toure is talking about the drought in our hearts and souls in these times we live in. We ought to listen carefully to this marvellous griot's valedictory farewell.

Ali Farka Toure called this album his best "ever" and, amazingly, it is. While Talking Timbuktu and Niafunke were mostly great, they had a bit of filler, and didn't always hold together in the way The Source, for example, did. Savane, on the other hand, is a complete, and completely excellent record from start to finish. Toure's blues stomp is in full force, and the desert sounds of the ngoni and njarka give Toure the perfect accompaniment to his snaky guitar and keeing voice. The album has the hypnotic feel of some of the recent gnawa inspired music to have come out of West Africa. The final track is one of the most beautiful in the Toure collection -- a fitting end to an album, a career, a musical life.

If ever an artist embodied the struggle between staying true to his roots and musical exploration, it was the late, great Ali Farka Touré. It would have been easy for him to become a fixture on the international stage playing with anyone he chose and the financial rewards would have been considerable. Instead, he turned his attention to expressing his own culture and exploring the links between it and the surrounding cultures. In doing so he became a local hero and a powerful symbol of national unity.
Although we usually think of `fusion' as a mix between something traditional and something Western, one could argue that Ali was permanently engaged in the twin processes of fusing and distillation most of his life -- although his attention rarely wandered far from West Africa.
"Savane" was a work in progress for several years, but it was mainly recorded at the now legendary Hotel Mande sessions in Bamako, which saw the recording of his sensational collaboration with Toumani Diabate "In the Heart of the Moon" as well as Toumani's own "Symmetric Orchestra sessions", which has just been released.
Every note of Ali's guitar and every sung word on "Savane" could come from no other artist. And yet, this is an album unlike any of previous albums.
There is an unusually international ensemble of musicians including JB horn man Pee Wee Ellis (who has been on most World Circuit albums of late) and Fain S. Dueñas of Radio Tarifa plus ngoni musicians Bassekou Kouyate and Mama Sissoko and Dasy Saré.
Now let's be under no illusions, each piece is bent to the will of Ali Farka Touré but under his distinctive canopy all kinds of interesting and surprising things are going on.
The title song has a ska-like backbeat for the distinctive guitars to spring off and the opening track "Ewly" features bold bluesy guitar offset by harmonica making the blues connection even stronger.
Famously, Ali Farka Touré always maintained he was not influenced by American blues musicians, he was just playing his traditional music. Attempts by musicologists to untangle this tale of origins have mostly come unstuck. One could see this album as a way of stating the external influences in his music or even an attempt to reach out but I think both interpretations are wrong and completely out of character.
Carefully, meticulously and imaginatively Ali reclaims the entire African diaspora music for the people of Africa and in doing so he plants his flag on the entire 20th Century music catalogue.
It would be, in short, an enterprise of lunatic megalomania except that it works and can therefore be described as nothing less than genius.

Ali Farka Toure looks and sounds like a man at peace with himself on this his final recording. The man who turned his back on the popular Afrobeat rhythms of his day, also turned his back on Western recording studios, returning to his roots in Mali, where he set up his own farm and recording studio, nurturing a village and a new generation of musicians. Savane, like Niafunke before, is a straight forward album, accompanied by local musicians, with a guest appearance by Pee Wee Ellis on two selections, and drawing on a wellspring of traditional Malian rhythms. In his music Ali Farka Toure demonstrated the connection between traditional West African music and the Delta Blues. Numerous comparisons were drawn to artists like John Lee Hooker and Lightnin' Hopkins, but he had a sound all his own, and at his peak was a towering figure in the world music industry, inspiring numerous Western as well as African musicians, resulting in the annual Festival in the Desert, which was captured in a 2003 recording on CD and DVD. Ali Farka Toure was also featured in Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues - A Musical Journey. For those who would like to sample some of his earlier recordings, I would suggest the recently released boxed set Red & Green.

You cannot go wrong if you are a fan of his work.......it is his best (or close to it) in my opinion, in the heart of the moon was also amazing.

(Ignore reviews on all music that say the harmonica ruins some tracks....not at all, its very unintrusive playing that does not over shadow the other instruments. Farka made sure that the overdubs were kept to a few little touchs....it was in his opinion his "best" and I think you will agree) Enjoy this

I agree with the earlier reviewers' 5-star ratings, but for slightly different reasons. Especially if one compares it to Niafunke (1999), Toure's "back to his roots" album, Savane both retains the earlier album's live, desert-dry quality and pushes these centuries-old song structures in intriguing new directions--but doing so without altering those structures. Certain songs, such as "Erdi" and "Ledi Coumbe," sound as though they could be a staking out of new possibilities for Malian music while remaining true to its firm, resiliant foundations.

One final observation: all music is communal in some sense, but Savane's music is about community in both the narrowest and broadest senses of that term. The title track is about drought but also about what the government can do to help people affected by it. There are love songs ("Soya"), a song about the idea of the "first child" ("Erdi"), songs about the virtues of work ("Machengoidi"), songs that summon the spirits ("Banga") . . . in other words, this is true folk music, not some music made to fill some A&R niche.

In his notes to "Soko Yhinka," a tribute to his mentor Anassi Coulibaly, Toure writes, "Death may eat his body, but death cannot eat his name." Not that his legacy was lacking before the release of this album, but Savane further ensures that death will not eat his name, either.

Fans of early American blues will hear the overtones of this tradition in these songs. But this is no re-hash of an old form. The striking polyrhythms and incredibly integrated scales form a bridge between the entire American blues tradition and the whole of the Malian music experience. High praise - and utterly unsubstantiated - but this album will show you what happens to talent when it is brought up under the equally compelling forces of two very different traditions. This sounds so effortless and genuine. It doesn't have the forced perfection of the material done with Ry Cooder or the naivete of some of the desert bands (Tartit, e.g., which is also great) or the smoothness of Habib Koite and Bamada. It's straight up blues, but played in Mali - I can't think of a better way to describe it. Highly recommended.

This is the second Ali Farka Toure album that I've purchased, the previous being his fine collaboration with Ry Cooder, TALKING TIMBUKTU. As much as I liked TT, SAVANE blew the earlier one away.

Much has been made of the late Toure being the great missing link between Africa and blues artists such as John Lee Hooker. One listen to Toure's work and you can see the parallels quite clearly, but this is so much more. Like the best of the blues, these songs are natural reflections on everyday life. While the American blues tends to focus more on carnal concerns, this concentrates more on ones place in society and more spiritual concerns.

The playing is superb throughout, and the vocals are packed with a passion that comes through even if the lyrics are in a different language. There is not a wasted note, let alone a wasted track on this whole album. Ali Farka Toure in his passing has left a great body of work to explore, and a superb album in SAVANE. I would highly recommend this to any fan of the blues and/or world music styles.

Those acquainted with Toure's totally unique guitar sound will be surprised to see it brought up a notch, many tracks filled a dirty , overdriven and primordial guitar tone. The recording is also fuller and more lush than many of his other albums, which usually bare his performance down to the absolute most confident minimum, voice, guitar, light rhythm sections. We hear how Toure's voice has aged over time, and he crows knowing he is reaching his end, making the music all the more powerful to the listener. Some of the album is propulsive and optimistic, but the best tracks are the brooding and totally immersive atmospheres such as the title track 'Savane', one of the most powerful songs Toure ever crafted. Beautiful ending to a beautiful life and career.

This is a very nice album from Ali Farka Tour. Songs are strong and unique. Highly recommended.