Niafunke - Ali Farka Touré

The guitarist Ali Farke Toure is one of the leading artists of the West African nation of Mali and an internationally respected musician, with a unique technique and repertoire. The music of this sand-poor dustbowl country at the edge of the Sahara is peculiarly strong, with renowned and prolific performers in a number of local styles, and on a caravan's cargo of unfamiliar oddball instruments, particularly strings- the multi-stringed kora, the guitar, the njarka (one string violin) and njurkle (traditional guitar). In this strange inbetweenland, the rhythms and tonalities of the language and song of many intermingling and wandering peoples have developed ...