ALI FARKA TOURÉ

ALI FARKA TOURÉ (Red Box, Dublin)

WIDELY ACCLAIMED for his 1994 collarboration with Ry Cooder (‘Talking Timbuktu’), Ali Farka Touré surely qualifies as most original act of the Guinness Blues Festival. A legend in his native Mali, Toure combines the roles of tribal chief and griot with his musical career.

Equal parts of African rhythms and Arabic melodies blend in the music of Ali Farka. The multiple percussionists and his droning, distorted sitar-like guitar lines produce a hypnotic mantra. Add keening vocals and occasional use of a one-string fiddle, and you have a sort of organic ambient trance.

You could never call this blues; it is more a type of Ur-music, in which the roots and origins of many styles are evident. Some blues, some ragga, some sufi-mystical chant, but more than the sum of the parts.

Song titles were redundant, and to Irish ears this may be almost impenetrable. Yet the purity of the music and the obvious joy with which it was played gave a sense of something being right. Not for everyone, and Boyzone it ain’t, but if you like your sounds challenging and powerful, this is it.

• Tom Fabozzi