| | Ali Farka Toure Talking Timbuktu CD Ali Farka Toure Discography of CDs
 (3 Customer Reviews)
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 ... Full Descriptionbluesmen 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.
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." Hide Description Talking Timbuktu Music | List Price | $16.98 (You save $3.53) | | Category | Rock/Pop Albums, Rock CDs, World, International, Blues, African, Mali | | Label | Hannibal | | Orig Year | 1994 | | All Time Sales Rank |  2122  | | CD Universe Part number | 1006242 | | Catalog number | 571381 | | Discs | 1 | | Release Date | Mar 29, 1994 | | Studio/Live | Studio | | Mono/Stereo | Stereo | | Producer | Ry Cooder | | Engineer | Mark Ettel | | Recording Time | 60 minutes | | Personnel | Jim Keltner - drums
Ry Cooder - acoustic & electric guitars, electric slide guitar, electric mando-guitar, cumbus, mbira, marimba, tamboura, mandolin, bass, samples
John Patitucci - acoustic bass, bass
Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown - electric guitar, viola
Ali Farka Toure - vocals, acoustic & electric guitars, 6-string banjo, njarka, percussion
Oumar Toure - vocals, congas, bongos
Hamma Sankare - vocals, calabash
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Ali Farka Toure Talking Timbuktu Songs Talking Timbuktu Music Review Average Rating: (4.7 out of 5 stars)   Engaging, contageous warmth
This music is both relaxing and energizing at the same time. It provides an ambience in which you can lay back and dream, or share a good time. The rythems are contageous, and at its best, it is purely timeless.
Submitted by a reviewer (New York, NY, USA) 
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 Tomotou Music
Well, one of the people above said "evocative of East African culture" Mali is in West Africa. In any case, this is true music from West Africa, the music of the sahel. This man knows what he is doing. May God bless his soul in Heaven.
Submitted by DSKBfoeva (Niamey,Niger)
Was This Review Helpful? Yes No 1 of 1 found this helpful.
The best of world music
This is real music. Just bought my third CD of Talking Timbuktu. Wonderfully evocative of east African culture.
Submitted by gardensgate (Highlands, NC, USA)
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Purchase Talking Timbuktu CD To buy, Click on price to add to cart | Ali Farka Toure Source CD (1992)
Talking Timbuktu album
 $13.89 
It is unfortunate that the early recordings by this brilliant Malian guitarist/singer/songwriter have been somewhat overshadowed by his better-known collaborations with Western artists (such as 1994's Grammy-winning, TALKING TIMBUKTU with Ry Cooder). This is not to say that Ali Farka Toure's more recent efforts aren't excellent, but rather that albums like THE SOURCE are so exceptional as to outshine even the best of his other work. Like his self-titled debut, THE SOURCE focuses on Toure's ...
| | Buena Vista Social Club CD (1997)
Talking Timbuktu CD music
$15.05  
BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Performance.
That Ry Cooder, you've got to keep an eye on him every minute, or he jumps into another cross-cultural collaboration. In the wake of his landmark recordings TALKING TIMBUKTU with Ali Farka Toure and A MEETING BY THE RIVER with V.M. Bhatt comes BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, essentially a supergroup of traditional Cuban musicians with the addition of international agitator Cooder. Somehow, Cooder always finds just the right space to slide his sinuous slide guitar into, so that it works in almost ...
| | Ry Cooder Meeting By The River CD (1993)
Talking Timbuktu music CDs
$13.79
| | Mike Bloomfield Super Session CD (1968) Bonus Tracks; Remastered
Talking Timbuktu songs
$7.59 
A surprise best-seller when it was first released, this mostly improvised pairing of singer/keyboardist/producer Al Kooper with two major guitar heroes of the day sounds fascinating all these years later precisely because of the distance of time--nobody makes records like this any more. The material runs the gamut from folk pop (covers of Donovan and Dylan), to blues ("Albert's Shuffle," "You Don't Love Me"), to heady jams ("His Holy Modal Majesty"), to big-band jazz ("Harvey's Tune").
All the tunes make effective templates for the kind off-the-cuff music-making that in less capable hands might have resulted in simple noodling. In fact, although Bloomfield and Stills don't play together on any of the cuts (Bloomfield played on one side of the original LP, Stills on the other), all three principals get off lots of good licks and producer Kooper has some interesting tricks up his sleeve, as in the over-the-top phasing he lavishes on "You Don't Love Me." The only real disappointment here is that Stills, a far better singer than Kooper, never opens his mouth.
Those familiar with the Live Adventures album these two recorded at the Fillmore West know ...
| | Sparx La Mejor Coleccion CDs (2007)
Talking Timbuktu album
$9.85
| | Rosie Ledet Sweet Brown Sugar CD (1995)
Talking Timbuktu CD music
$13.19
| | L L Cool J All World CD (1996)
Talking Timbuktu music CDs
$12.05
LL Cool J is an unimpeachably important figure in the history of hip-hop. He has weathered all the trends and fashions in the rap world over the last decade. ALL WORLD is a long overdue greatest-hits collection that makes a strong case for LL as one of the most consistent and innovative figures in rap, pre-dating the Death Row crew ...
| | Clarence Williams Shake 'Em Up 1927-29 CD (2000)
Talking Timbuktu songs
$15.95
| | Ivory Joe Hunter 1945-1947 CD (2002)
Talking Timbuktu album
$12.89
| | Nelson Riddle Route 66/More Hit TV Themes CD (2002) (Import) Import; United Kingdom
Talking Timbuktu CD music
$13.59
| | Olivia Newton-John Gold CD (2005) (Import) Australia
Talking Timbuktu music CDs
$22.75
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