Think about being Jimi Hendrix’s son, and forging your personal path as a musician. Vieux Farka Touré has carried that weight, wrestling with the legacy of his father Ali Farka Touré, the Malian guitarist whose ’90s albums with Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder launched western audiences to the blues’ diasporic loop, from the slave ships to the USA and again to Africa, the place younger Ali heard John Lee Hooker and shivered with recognition. Touré Senior closed that circuit of affect, defining what got here to be termed desert blues.
Vieux Farka Touré, in the meantime, went his personal means. Blessed with equally virtuosic guitar expertise, he defied Ali’s preliminary disapproval to change into a musician. Beginning his skilled profession in 2006, the 12 months his father died, he explored completely different collaborative byways as he established himself, working with jazz nice John Scofield and Allman Brothers alumnus Derek Vans on The Secret (2011), and two improvised albums with Israeli musicians as The Touré-Rachael Collective. In reality, he’s by no means wandered removed from Malian music. However, 16 years after his father’s demise, this sixth solo album lastly immerses him in Ali’s sound. It’s as if, having made his personal identify, he’s now in a position to let go, permitting Ali’s affect to flood via. “This album needed to be very pure, with the identical temper and feeling my father had,” he tells Uncut. “I’ve this music in my blood and my coronary heart anyway. What I’m doing remains to be myself. It’s not the identical as earlier Vieux Farka Touré albums, however it’s the identical as I’m on the street, within the college – it’s what I’m doing on a regular basis. That is the custom. It’s just like the songs from my home.”
Les Racines means “the roots” and, as he crafted its music with most care at his Bamako house studio – named Studio Ali Farka Touré in unapologetic homage – Touré dug as deep as he may. Amadou & Mariam’s Amadou Bagayoko, who interweaves guitars on high-velocity opener “Gabou Ni Tie”, was among the many elite Malian musicians who stopped by. However Les Racines is in the end a full and fierce showcase for Vieux’s personal prowess, and his restatement of desert blues.
The instrumental “L’Âme”, which means “the soul”, sinks most intentionally and deeply into Ali’s spirit, rising and sinking like breath, with a loping, rolling gait, ’til it quickens in climactic tribute. It has the heat of an abiding reminiscence. “Flany Konare” is a contrasting assertion of dwelling, sensual love, Touré singing “Cherie, Cherie, Cherie, Cherie!” with unabashed, mantric directness, his voice conversationally low as a good, powerful association pops and ripples, and his guitar dances over his personal, deep-set jabs. “Adou” is equally fervent, and exultantly happy with the son it’s named after. “Les Racines” sounds Spanish at first, with its castanet-style percussive clicks and Touré’s florid, brooding riffs, however his enjoying’s introspective depth and lyricism, shadowed by Toumani Diabaté’s brother, Madou Sidiki Diabaté, on kora, is a really particular person communing with roots.
Custom is at all times double-edged, each a rooted energy and restriction, and “Gabou Ni Tie”’s chiding of a woman who rejects ancestral training and, as Touré explains, “the recommendation of her mother and father and solely retains dangerous firm”, promotes communal obligations.
Elsewhere, although, Les Racines’ many tutorial songs can’t be denied. Touré intends these lyrics for each Mali’s elites – with extra expectation of being heard than most rock protest songs – and the toiling farmers in its rural expanse, the place music stays the prime info supply. He’s addressing a nation groaning with musical wealth however riven with ethnic battle, alongside IS slaughter, authorities corruption and insidious overseas affect. No marvel “Ngala Kaourene”, which pleads for ethnic reconciliation, begins with the album’s starkest blues guitar notes, Madou Traore’s flute sweeping Touré’s guitar in its slipstream as he desperately implores. “Ndjehene Direne” closes Les Racines with staccato guitar stabs so liltingly light-toned but relentless that they’ve a cumulative impact.
This delayed return to his father’s musical home finds Vieux Farka Touré commandingly authoritative and viscerally current. For all its vivid tumult and protest, his musical strains at all times loop again, like John Coltrane or John Lee Hooker, however additional nonetheless, carrying him house.
