Ali Farka Touré

Discouraged initially from performing music because of his high caste, Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré eventually became an international star—though one who’d still regularly return to his life as a farmer and, for a time, the mayor of his hometown of Niafunké. Born in the village of Kanau in 1939, Touré also worked as a boatman, mechanic and tailor before focusing on guitar in the mid-’50s, after hearing Guinea’s Keita Fodeba. Touré began recording in Mali's capital, Bamako, where he moved in 1970, and music from his cassette releases, beginning with 1976’s Ali Touré Farka, found its way onto British radio. The World Circuit label tracked him down and he released his self-titled international debut in 1988. Touré sang about virtue, community, and hard work in several African languages, while the trancelike pentatonic patterns of his mostly acoustic guitar playing suggest a connection to American bluesmen like John Lee Hooker. Touré’s best-known album is 1994’s Talking Timbuktu, a collaboration with Ry Cooder, and he earned a Grammy for 2005’s In the Heart of the Moon with Malian kora virtuoso Toumani Diabaté. His final album, Savane, was released shortly after his death from cancer in 2006.