Showing posts with label mali. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mali. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
Islamist Extremists Ban Ali Farka Toure's Music in His Hometown
The bastards:
from the BBC last month:
6 December 2012 Last updated at 12:24 ET
Blues for Mali as Ali Farka Toure's music is banned
By Thomas Fessy BBC News, Bamako
After making northern Mali's "Blues" music famous around the world, Ali Farka Toure is a legend in his home town of Niafunke, where he was mayor until his death in 2006.
The memorial to him is still intact but his music is no longer heard in the town's streets.
"The town has gone silent," says 28-year-old farmer Ousmane Maiga (not his real name) over the phone. "It's way too quiet".
Islamist fighters have taken over Niafunke, which sits on the banks of the river Niger 100km (60 miles) south-west of Timbuktu. They have introduced a strict social code: Women and girls must be covered, young men cannot wear loose trousers and all forms of music are banned. Residents say two young men were whipped last month after they were caught smoking tobacco.
Toure was just one of a host of stars who have turned music into one of Mali's best known exports.
"Music is so much part of our culture," says Mr Maiga. "It's everywhere here, I miss listening to it over tea with my friends on the weekend. I miss attending wedding ceremonies and baptisms."
All time great
It was the music of northern Mali that Toure took to the world, its lilting, mournful tones reaching an international audience when he teamed up with his US soulmate, Ry Cooder, to produce the Grammy-winning album Talking Timbuktu in 1994. He was ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as among the 100 great guitarists of all time and starred in the Martin Scorsese documentary, Feel Like Going Home, which traced the roots of the blues back to West Africa. But these roots are now threatened. Niafunke and other towns in northern Mali have been plunged into a cultural darkness.
Islamist militants linked to al-Qaeda have banned everything they deem to be against Sharia, or Islamic law.
"They are destroying our culture," says another of Mali's most famous singers, Salif Keita. He is currently back home in Mali, preparing for a world tour to accompany the release of his latest album.
"If there's no music, no Timbuktu, it means that there is no more culture in Mali," he adds, sitting in the grounds of his home on the small island he owns on the river Niger outside the capital, Bamako.
Keita is referring to the destruction in June of the ancient shrines in Timbuktu's mosques. The buildings were Unesco World Heritage Sites but considered by the Islamists to be idolatrous.
Dozens of musicians have fled south since the crisis began, among them Khaira Arby "the Voice of the North". She cannot return to her home in Timbuktu because Islamists have threatened to cut out her tongue, according to members of her band who have also fled south. She first stayed with a cousin but has resigned herself to renting a house in Bamako after she realised that she could be displaced for longer than she thought.
"Islamists have jammed radio airwaves," she tells me while her guitarists and percussionist adjust their instruments for an evening rehearsal in her small living-room.
The two guitars are plugged into one small amplifier producing a heavily distorted sound. The band's equipment was looted when rebels marched into Timbuktu. Arby sits on the edge of her sofa. She looks sad, but soon her eyes close and her voice climbs and falls with the guitar riffs.
Ringtones banned
Song completed, she tries to make sense of what is happening to her country. "They're even confiscating mobile phones and replacing ringtones with Koranic verses," she laments.
From Timbuktu to Gao, telephones have become the only way to listen to music lately. Those who have risked turning a stereo on have immediately attracted the attention of the Islamist police. Their equipment would be either seized or smashed.
Read the full story and additional information HERE.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
African Musician Ali Farka Toure Dies
NYT
March 7, 2006
African Musician Ali Farka Toure Dies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:52 p.m. ET
BAMAKO, Mali (AP) -- Two-time Grammy Award winner Ali Farka Toure, one of Africa's best-known performers, died Tuesday in his native Mali after a long illness. He was either 66 or 67.
Mali's Culture Ministry said Toure died at his home in the capital, Bamako, after a long struggle with an unidentified illness. His record company, World Circuit Records, said he suffered from bone cancer and died in his sleep.
Toure melded traditional Malian stringed instruments and vocals with the American blues guitarwork he considered firmly rooted in West Africa, where most North American slaves were shipped from.
One of the original progenitors of a genre known as Mali Blues, Toure played a traditional Malian stringed instrument called the gurkel.
He was best-known overseas for his 1994 collaboration with American guitarist Ry Cooder on ''Talking Timbuktu,'' which netted him his first Grammy.
He won his second Grammy last month, taking traditional world music album honors for his ''In the Heart of the Moon'' album, performed with fellow Malian Toumani Diabate.
World Circuit Records said Toure had just completed work on a new solo album.
Across this deeply impoverished west African nation, people mourned Toure's passing and radio stations suspended regular programming to broadcast his signature lilting sounds.
''A monument has fallen. With the death of Ali Farka Toure, Mali is losing one of its greatest ambassadors,'' said Mbaye Boubacar Diarra, a television producer.
''I'm completely in mourning,'' singer Djeneba Seck said through her tears. ''It's as if I lost my father.''
Toure was born in 1939 in the northern Sahara Desert trading post of Timbuktu. Like many Africans of his generation, the exact date of his birth was not recorded.
He learned the gurkel at an early age and later took up the guitar. He cited many Western musicians for inspiration, including Ray Charles, Otis Redding and John Lee Hooker.
He once said in an interview that his songs examined education, work, love and society, according to the Web site allmusic.com. He released at least 10 albums and toured often in North America and Europe.
His record company called him ''a true original.''
''He transposed the traditional music of his native north Mali and single-handedly brought the style known as desert blues to an international audience,'' the company said in a statement.
Toure spent much of his older age in his childhood town of Niafunke, which has become a pilgrimage spot for many music-loving Africans and tourists.
In 2004, Toure became mayor of the small farming town.
His family said although no date had yet been determined, he will be buried in the sandy loam near Timbuktu.
''For some people, Timbuktu is a place at the end of nowhere,'' he once was quoted as saying. ''But that's not true. I'm from Timbuktu, and I can tell you that it's right in the center of the world.''
^------
On the Net:
http://www.allmusic.com
March 7, 2006
African Musician Ali Farka Toure Dies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:52 p.m. ET
BAMAKO, Mali (AP) -- Two-time Grammy Award winner Ali Farka Toure, one of Africa's best-known performers, died Tuesday in his native Mali after a long illness. He was either 66 or 67.
Mali's Culture Ministry said Toure died at his home in the capital, Bamako, after a long struggle with an unidentified illness. His record company, World Circuit Records, said he suffered from bone cancer and died in his sleep.
Toure melded traditional Malian stringed instruments and vocals with the American blues guitarwork he considered firmly rooted in West Africa, where most North American slaves were shipped from.
One of the original progenitors of a genre known as Mali Blues, Toure played a traditional Malian stringed instrument called the gurkel.
He was best-known overseas for his 1994 collaboration with American guitarist Ry Cooder on ''Talking Timbuktu,'' which netted him his first Grammy.
He won his second Grammy last month, taking traditional world music album honors for his ''In the Heart of the Moon'' album, performed with fellow Malian Toumani Diabate.
World Circuit Records said Toure had just completed work on a new solo album.
Across this deeply impoverished west African nation, people mourned Toure's passing and radio stations suspended regular programming to broadcast his signature lilting sounds.
''A monument has fallen. With the death of Ali Farka Toure, Mali is losing one of its greatest ambassadors,'' said Mbaye Boubacar Diarra, a television producer.
''I'm completely in mourning,'' singer Djeneba Seck said through her tears. ''It's as if I lost my father.''
Toure was born in 1939 in the northern Sahara Desert trading post of Timbuktu. Like many Africans of his generation, the exact date of his birth was not recorded.
He learned the gurkel at an early age and later took up the guitar. He cited many Western musicians for inspiration, including Ray Charles, Otis Redding and John Lee Hooker.
He once said in an interview that his songs examined education, work, love and society, according to the Web site allmusic.com. He released at least 10 albums and toured often in North America and Europe.
His record company called him ''a true original.''
''He transposed the traditional music of his native north Mali and single-handedly brought the style known as desert blues to an international audience,'' the company said in a statement.
Toure spent much of his older age in his childhood town of Niafunke, which has become a pilgrimage spot for many music-loving Africans and tourists.
In 2004, Toure became mayor of the small farming town.
His family said although no date had yet been determined, he will be buried in the sandy loam near Timbuktu.
''For some people, Timbuktu is a place at the end of nowhere,'' he once was quoted as saying. ''But that's not true. I'm from Timbuktu, and I can tell you that it's right in the center of the world.''
^------
On the Net:
http://www.allmusic.com
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