Niafunke

Ali Farka Toure

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 22, 1999)
• Original Release Date: June 22, 1999
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Hannibal
• ASIN: B00000JFRN
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #74,521 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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  #47 in	Music > World Music > Africa > Mali
  #59 in	Music > Indie Music > World Music > Africa

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Ali Farka Toure's first album since his 1994 collaboration with Ry Cooder, Talking Timbuktu, makes a convincing argument for the adage that home is where the art is. Recorded in an abandoned brick edifice located between Toure's extensive rice fields and the Sahara-bordering village of Niafunké, Mali, this is the guitarist's most purely African album yet. Local percussionists, a sensuous village chorus, and a lonely one-stringed njarka violin accompany Toure here, replacing the Western guests who've tended to stilt his prior records. More relaxed and less gratuitously ornamental than before (especially when he plays acoustically), Toure digs deeply into spare, loping pentatonic grooves that extend beyond the usual John Lee Hooker blues comparisons into territory older, richer, and more folkloric (and Islamic) than earlier records have approached. --Richard Gehr

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In his own element, November 20, 2003

By	James Ferguson (Vilnius, Lithuania) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Ali Farka Toure is in his own element on this recording, offering a stripped down version of his plaintive music that evokes so many comparisons. Toure himself put the shoe on the other foot by saying that John Lee Hooker is a Malian at heart. One can hear a resonance in these two voices, but the music is very different. Toure comes from a strong Islamic as well as African tradition, and this music very much reflects that.

Toure was disappointed by some of the collaborative efforts he did, Taj Mahal in particular. He had a hard time fitting his music into the Blues mold producers wanted him to do. Scorcese makes the same mistake in his opening film in the PBS series, getting Toure to play along with Corey Harris, but you can see that his heart is not in it. Toure is very much his own man and this CD is the most representative of his personal feelings about music.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars African music first- and listen to it that way, November 12, 1999

By A Customer

The most important thing to understand about this recording is the genuineness of Toure's claim to be be playing Malian music first, and American blues second. Toure is not the Malian John Lee Hooker. He plays the music of his land, with it's time, steps, paces, thoughts and wishes. It is trite and simple to say that Blues comes from Africans therefore . . . Toure is a deceptively simple introduction to African music. If you allow yourself to be lulled, fooled into thinking you have heard this before and it fits into your pre-built structure of music, you are missing some, maybe not most, of the spirit of this album. It rewards opening out. One day every listener, true listener, will allow themselves to hear the foreigness of this amazing album, and the rewards will have just begun.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding!, March 27, 2001

By	Ed Gibbon www.congocookbook.com (Washington DC) - See all my reviews

Ali Farka Toure's "Niafunke" is one great album, showcasing the West African approach to the guitar, and proving that Toure is getting better with each passing year. It was genius to avoid the homogenization of "world" music by recording this CD in Mali, near home, with local musicians. The music can be described as a sort of "Sahara blues", a mix of North and West African traditional music and American blues, but there's much more to it than that. Play this CD, be taken away by it, listen to the voices and instruments (African drums and strings), and you'll agree with Toure, who says that "Timbuktu [is] right at the heart of the world."