There is no one who currently displays that Rock ‘n Roll and the blues has found its roots in Africa better than Tinariwen, and Vieux Farka Toure. But today we’ll just meditate on the works of the latter. The Malian protégé Vieux is a genius in his own right. What he does is rightful inheritance from his father, Ali Farka Toure, who through his music forged landscapes that beseeched peace and humility upon the planet.
As much as Ali achieved that his son,Vieux, has engineered a sound which does not only perceive a rich past but invites the future into today’s broken state of our frail lives. In basic terms; Vieux is reminding a generation that it doesn’t have to be lost, and wander but can look back and affirm its identity and head off to pursue a reality which is for the better. Nothing is more rock ‘n roll than that.
So let’s agree to say Vieux Farka’s music is a safe space.
Vieux Farka Toure’s latest The Secret is one of my favorite “world music” albums that I have heard in a long time. The thing about the genre it can sound almost monotonous. The pentatonic can become a mask if it doesn’t contain a meditation or the ritual but Vieux seems to have re-energized himself in some-sort of fire dance.
Let’s start with Gido, featuring jazz guitarist John Scofield, a trance-dance pacing itself in a rhythm which is reliving itself in hollow beats containing a depth your drum kit will never hold, bass line which patterns a triumphant dance and in the midst two guitars are celebrating the party in the mode of improvising.
There’s another blues rock breakthrough here through another collaboration, with Derek Trucks in Aigna. Aaaah, in this meditative ritual ballad in the midst of the same mode of repetition, usually a pride of Mali’s music, and in between the choral singing of male singers, guitars are the mode of speech. Both guitarist in the mode of praise, and alerting us of a danger that is about to peer from the midst of the turmoil of our today.
For Vieux to collaborate with the West is no weakness. It is actually an admission, from those who have taken the music and have polluted it, of the origins of this pure music.
In the title track, The Secret, Vieux is collaborating with his late father. In this peaceful love song, you feel as a listener as if you missing out on something. As father-and-son relate in musicology there is an untold story, which is only known by the two communicators. To be honest, it is a realm that could only be expressed by those who are keeping The Secret to themselves. With no vocals, just slight percussion, and two guitars diving in and out of each other in a composition which seems like a song which only the untold can describe.
Whenever I get vague about an album, its only because my love for it is as surreal and invisible as every note assembled to make the space of the music possible.
