Savane (2006)
13 tracks, 59 minutes
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In 1961, a compilation of 16 Robert Johnson tracks returned him to the popular consciousness and inspired a whole load of white kids to become rock musicians. 23 years after his death, that album enshrined Robert Johnson as The King of the Delta Blues Singers. Released just four months after his own death, the cover of Savane proclaims Ali Farka Touré as the ‘King of the Desert Blues Singers.’ It’s an ultimate superlative and, as with Johnson’s title, it’s hard to argue that it is undeserved.
For most music fans, Ali Farka Touré was the first time they’d encountered the concept of the ‘African blues.’ When his albums of his voice-and-guitar renditions of the traditional Songhoi style were re-released in the UK in 1986, it was an absolute revelation. Music fans, journalists and DJs fell off their chairs at this wonderful, hither-to unknown (to them) music that sounded (to them) so reminiscent of the blues, especially John Lee Hooker’s drone-based delta style but with the high-pitched, slightly Arab-influenced vocal melodies of the Sahara desert. In fact, for most of the time, Ali claimed never to have heard blues music until he came to Europe in the late 1980s…that doesn’t appear to be exactly true, but then Ali was known for often speaking in deep metaphors and near-impenetrable riddles. It’s quite possible that he didn’t consider blues to be a style of music at all; for him it was just a subgenre of his own.
By the time it had come to his last album, though, there was no doubt that Ali had taken blues as a vital component into his sound. For me, Savane is Ali Farka Touré’s masterpiece, and he thought so too. He was dying as he made it, and he knew it; there was no point in leaving any of the stops un-pulled. But instead of filling it with American or European guests such as those he’d worked with in the past, this one was all about him. There are still big names on the disc – Bassekou Kouyaté on ngoni, Afel Bocoum on backing vocals, Pee Wee Ellis on tenor sax and Little George Sueref on harmonica – but they are all working for Ali, prostrating themselves musically at his giant’s feet.
The whole album is gloriously cool. Ali’s voice has a lower pitch than he had 20 years earlier, but it means he can get to a menacing growl when he wants to. His guitarwork is sublime, whether he uses acoustic or electric, and his bandleadership is beyond reproach – there is not one solo or one lick that is out of place. Whether the tracks are in a stripped-back and traditional mode with just guitar, ngoni and calabash behind him, or a full-on rolling desert blues explosion like the opening track ‘Erdi’, which sees the one-string njarka fiddle trading lines with the blues harp, all of it is fit to explode your expectations.
When you know that a work is going to be your last, it’s got to be a good one. Ali Farka Touré didn’t want to leave his fans wanting, and so he recorded a blockbuster. He never lived to see it released, but he did get to give the final approval weeks before he left. After decades of creating music that made jaws drop around the world, what an awesome way to close it with a bang. Whether of Songhoi music, a nebulous ‘desert blues’ or just his own wonderful style, Ali Farka Touré was, without a doubt, the King.
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