Radio Mali’s Acoustic Masterpiece

ALI FARKA TOURE
Red & Green (Nonesuch)

Since retiring from professional music, we have to take what we can of famed Malian blues musician Ali Farka Toure. On the double-disc Red & Green Nonesuch – the label that brought him abroad with Radio Mali and Talking Timbuktu – remasters albums cut in 1979 and ’88. These untitled gems (names refer to the color of original album sleeves) are exquisite minimal renderings of Toure’s interpretations of local Sonrai, Peul and Tamascheq styles, the last which Toure believes a major influence on American blues. The melodic interplay of guitar, vocals and calabash reveal stripped down sounds as rich as Baaba Maal’s epic Djam Leelii, superb fullness rendered by minimal instrumentation. Songs like “Chérie,” although light on low end, exhibit the same tendency towards trance as other Islam-based folk styles a la gnawa. In the repetition of floating guitar lines, steady calabash rhythms and Toure’s piercing, at times mournfully beautiful vocals, the strength of ten orchestras emit from four simple hands.