"I sing about what I see, and right now I see a lot of troubles," says Samba Touré. If these sound like the words of a seasoned bluesman, there is good reason for that. The guitarist is speaking from his home in Mali, a country that has in recent years lived through more than its fair share of turbulent times. However, Touré's latest album Gandadiko is far from heavy listening. While its title roughly translates from the Songhai language to "Land of Drought", its contents are sweetened with captivating melody and a sure-footed sense of purpose.
“I have always written concerned songs, awareness songs,” Touré adds. This, he explains, can be traced back to the rich musical heritage of his home and family. “Mali is a country full of music. It was always there for me. My mother was also a singer. She used to sing traditional songs and was even supported by a young Ali Farka Touré a long time ago.”
Farka Touré, who died in 2006 at the age of 66, remains perhaps the most famous of all Malian musicians. Not only was he the first African blues artist to achieve widespread acclaim in his own continent, his hypnotic blend of West African and North American idioms won fans across the globe. His work continues to inspire artists around the world, but for Samba Touré his influence was more direct.
“When I first moved to Bamako in the 1980s and started playing there, Zairean music was everyone’s favourite style,” Touré says. “I started in a band that played a mix of that and traditional Malian sounds. I began as a singer. One day, I met Farka and he said: ‘Guy, you sing well but it’s not your roots. You should go back to them.’ He gave me a guitar and I learnt how to play it – I actually still have it, but it’s very tired now. He supported me a lot. He also helped to produce my first tape in Mali, which I recorded with some of the members of his band.”
Those connections were first made in 1997, when Touré joined his mentor’s band on a world tour. The experience affected him profoundly, prompting him to set about developing his own style of Songhai blues. Now at 46, Touré is a successful and respected artist in his own right. He has produced an enviable body of work and played around the world, but it is still tempting to wonder whether it has been difficult to emerge from such an illustrious shadow.
“In some ways it’s difficult and in others it’s not,” he says. “The only real difficulty is that since my very first solo works, I’ve found myself being presented as an inheritor of Ali Farka Touré. He is a master for all musicians from the north of Mali, but it is important to remember that even he was an inheritor of a long musical tradition. Songhai music has been around for a long time, but what he did was make it known all around the world.”
Touré goes on to list a number of contemporary artists with similar roots. They include such names as Vieux Farka Touré, Sidi Touré, Afel Bocoum and Anansy Cissé. While he is clearly happy to recognise the common ground between them, Touré is equally quick to draw attention to the diversity of their work. “We share the same culture, the same heritage,” he says, “but we are all very different. I know people will always compare musicians from the north of Mali, but the truth is that every musician has their own style; they all create in their own way. I certainly hope I create in my own way.”
Touré’s personal approach combines guitar work that rocks just hard enough for its intricacy to be deceptive. He is a prodigiously talented musician and a powerful, versatile vocalist. He is also a gifted and perceptive lyricist whose songs tackle a variety of important issues.
Albala, the album that preceded Gandadiko, was recorded in 2012, when religious extremists seized control of much of the north of Mali. Touré's own ancestral village was one among many that fell to groups that sought to enforce a brutal interpretation of Sharia and to ban music in a region renowned for the beauty of its culture. At the same time, the after-effects of a recent military coup continued to be felt in the Malian capital. The record attracted considerable attention, in many cases thanks to Touré's fearless denunciations of religious conflict and violence.
"Albala was my answer to that situation," he says. "My work was more sad and dark then. I was not in a mood to make people dance when people in the north were having their feet amputated [by militants]. Things were serious then and nothing is really fixed now. But that album was not just about war."
Touré is keen to add that his concerns are not and have never been limited to international headline news. While Albala included songs such as Fondora, which took to task "all armed groups", he also points out that it included others "about the respect due to our old people, about the importance of water to people in Mali, about false friends who betray you". He agrees that Gandadiko may seem a gentler experience than its predecessor but insists that his approach to songwriting has remained the same.
Accordingly, Gandadiko lends equal weight to broad geopolitical themes and matters of everyday life. Take three of its strongest moments for example: Wo Yendé Alakar offers a poignant and forceful indictment of terrorism; Touri Idjé Bibi laments the way in which pollution is destroying the environment; and Farikoyo pays tribute to farmers in northern Mali who have suffered through drought and conflict in recent years.
Touré obviously has plenty to say about the state of the world, but he refuses to present himself as a moral authority. This even applies to the song Su Wililé, which takes a stand against younger Malian musicians whose lyrics often glorify lifestyles of carefree hedonism. "I'm not a teacher," he says. "I've never even been to school, so I don't know how to educate someone. I have four children and that's enough hard work ... I can't judge anyone, but some hip-hop artists these days do sing about beer and weed in their music and, to me, that's stupid. I just think: 'Do what you want with your life, but don't encourage others to follow you.'"
Still, a certain open-mindedness sits at the heart of Touré’s aesthetic and is, he says, what keeps him moving forward. In addition to the Songhai culture in which he is steeped, he frequently draws inspiration from sources farther from home. These range from Serge Gainsbourg to Tom Petty and Jimi Hendrix. “We all live in the same world and have the TV, the internet and the radio,” he says. “Music travels. If musicians from a strong musical tradition only play music from that tradition, they will only ever do the same thing and I’m not interested in doing that.”
Touré also views his many collaborations as entirely natural. However, placed in the context of recent years, he recognises that they send a powerful message. “Malian musicians have always played together, whatever group they are from,” he explains. “I’ve worked with Oumou Sangaré who is Fulani, with my friend Ahmed [Ag Kaedi] from Amanar, who is Tamasheq, and with artists like Adama Yalomba, who is from the Macina region. They are friends and colleagues – we are all Malian musicians. The people who wanted to ban music have lost, but it is important to remember that they can still destroy many other precious things [if we allow them to].”
Dave Stelfox is a journalist and photographer based in London.
This album is available on Amazon.
thereview@thenational.ae