Ali Farka Toure Talking Timbuktu CD

TALKING TIMBUKTU won the 1995 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album.

By the time your average listeners get around to the slow, elemental backbeat of "Ai Du," all of their preconceptions about chickens and eggs, roots and fruits or bluesmen and griots have been blurred and obscured by the enchanting music that makes up TALKING TIMBUKTU.

That's because TALKING TIMBUKTU is an epic cross-cultural super-session that captures the deepest spirit of music and transports it across ethnic and stylistic boundaries without demeaning the gift-giver or the gift. Ali Farka Toure's blissful melodic lines do not adhere to traditional blues form, but rather suggest a kind of pre-blues music of African origins. On a tune such as "Soukora" Toure pours out his heart to his lover, as he and Cooder playfully circle each other with bell-like chords and ornaments that sound like a curtain of electric pearls, while Toure's more vivid attack on "Amandral" echoes phrases evocative of John Lee Hooker. In truth, TALKING TIMBUKTU resists easy description. It is exquisite, mysterious music.

Recorded at Ocean Way Recording Studios, Los Angeles, California in September, 1993. Includes liner notes by Nick Gold.

Personnel: Ali Farka Touré (vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, banjo, percussion); Ry Cooder (vocals, guitar, electric guitar, steel guitar, mandolin, tamboura, marimba, bass guitar, sampler); Oumar Toure (vocals, congas, bongos); Hamma Sankare (vocals, percussion); Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown (electric guitar, viola); John Patitucci (acoustic bass, bass guitar); Jim Keltner (drums).

Audio Mixers: Larry Hirsh; Mark Ettel.

Recording information: Ocean Way Recording Studios, Hollywood, CA (09/1993).

Photographer: Susan Titelman.

Unknown Contributor Roles: Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown; Jim Keltner; John Patitucci; Ali Farka Touré; Ry Cooder.

Arranger: Ali Farka Touré.

It's all in there: the droning traditional timbres of Mali in Ali Farka Toure's guitar; the deep, mysterious incantations of the Mississippi delta blues in Ry Cooder's slide work; the soulful backwoods moan of "Gatemouth" Brown's viola; the percolating rhythms of Hamma Sankare and Oumar Toure; and the earthy resonant dance of drummer Jim Keltner and bassist John Patitucci. "Ai Du" sums out to something not unlike the blues or West African music...but it's something else again--like some pan-ethnic folk music for the 21st century.

Personnel: Ali Farka Toure (vocals, acoustic & electric guitars, 6-string banjo, njarka, percussion), Ry Cooder (acoustic & electric guitars, electric slide guitar, electric mando-guitar, cumbus, mbira, marimba, tamboura, mandolin, bass, samples); Oumar Toure (vocals, congas, bongos); Hamma Sankare (vocals, calabash); Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown (electric guitar, viola); John Patitucci (acoustic bass, bass); Jim Keltner (drums).

Uncut (2/03, p.78) - "...The spirit of spontaneity only serves to emphasize the deep understanding between the two guitarists and the connections between American blues and its African roots..."
Musician (6/94, p.86) - "...Toure's home village of Niafunke nestles between the Sahara and the Niger River, his farm plots carefully cultivated in a precarious symmetry between two inexorable forces. It's fitting that TALKING TIMBUKTU achieves its own quiet balance among several roots and branches of the blues...."
Village Voice (2/28/95) - Ranked #40 in the Village Voice's 1994 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll.
Stereo Review (5/94, p.91) - "...a very different tapestry of cross-cultural musical threads that co-exist happily and beautifully..."
Mojo (Publisher) (1/95, p.52) - Included in Mojo's "25 Best Albums of 1994" - "A sprung cushion of boneless rhythms conjured up by the rich ringing West African guitar of Toure...and the loose spiritual blues of Cooder."