PhilPaine.com

I’m play­ing, for the umpteenth time, my favourite among Touré’s albums. I’ve writ­ten else­where about this aston­ish­ing musi­cian [Think­ing of Tim­buk­tu; Ali Far­ka Touré, Toumani Dia­baté In Per­fect Sync; Ali Far­ka Touré and Ry Cood­er Talk­ing Tim­buk­tu]. This album is a trib­ute to his beloved Niger Riv­er roots, with song lyrics jump­ing casu­al­ly between Bam­bara, Temazhek and French. Tracks like “Cinquante Six” and “Yen­na” demon­strate his absolute mas­tery of the gui­tar, with the per­fect tim­ing that made him a leg­end. My favourite track is the song “Dofana”, in which he wist­ful­ly evokes a small vil­lage, “a par­adise on Earth, only twen­ty kilo­me­tres from here”, threat­ened only by the “idio­cy of politi­cians”. Touré, on becom­ing a suc­cess­ful record­ing artist, eschewed the migra­tion to Paris or Lon­don, and instead became the may­or of just such a vil­lage. Most of the mon­ey he made went into sup­ply­ing it with clean water and electricity.