Blues from Mali, for fans of Tinariwen, Ali Farka Touré, and any West African sound.
You’ve heard Blues from Chicago and Mississippi. Maybe you’ve heard some Piedmont pickers, or John Lee Hooker’s one-chord style from Detroit. If you’ve enjoyed the latter, or any of the above categories for that matter, then I wish to direct you towards Malian blues.
Particularly the album by Boubacar Traoré, which I have linked at the bottom of this post. He’s a musician whose life story is as fascinating as his sound. The subject of the wonderful documentary, I’ll Sing for You, he first became popular in the 1960s in his home country of Mali, a newly independent country after seventy years of French colonization. It was a country in transition, a time where art, when not suppressed, had flourished.
While Boubacar Traoré had experienced a small amount of popularity in the 60s, he fell into oblivion with the arrival of military strongman Moussa Traoré (I know… I refer to them with their full names to avoid any confusion). The military ruler silenced anyone associated with the regime before him, including university professors, politicians, and socialist-leaning activists. He was a bloody leader who wished to stamp out the previous regime. He monitored the radio airwaves, ending Boubacar Traoré’s musical popularity.
With the fall of Moussa Traoré in the nineties, Boubacar resurged. He recorded this album in 1992 in France. He is now celebrated as one of Mali’s finest musicians, collaborating with Ali Faria Touré, the African guitar god best known to western audiences for his album with Ry Cooder.
His particular style of desert blues blends the Arabic and Tuareg sounds with his own home country’s musical roots, blending into a style that mesmerizes from start to finish. I hope you enjoy it.
Bird On the Wire 