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Mali buries Ali Farka Toure
10/03/2006 09:51 - (SA)
Bamako - Grieving friends and family members buried African musical legend Ali Farka Toure in the two-time Grammy Award winner's hometown on the edge of the Sahara Desert, mourners said.
The government transported the body of Toure, who died on Tuesday, by truck to his hometown of Niafunke after heavy sandstorms across West Africa grounded the plane meant to bring him to the town in the region of Timbuktu, just south of the Sahara Desert.
His loved ones buried him there on Thursday, said one funeral participant, Amadou Cisse, reached by telephone from Bamako, the faraway capital of Mali.
Toure, in his late 60s and known to be battling cancer, melded traditional Malian stringed instruments and vocals with the American blues guitarwork he considered firmly rooted in West Africa, from where most North American slaves were shipped.
Best known overseas for his 1994 collaboration with American guitarist Ry Cooder on "Talking Timbuktu", which netted him his first Grammy, Toure was a local giant who helped bankroll a production company that has nurtured Mali's young talent.
Toure, one of Africa's best-known artists, won his second Grammy this year in the traditional world music album category for "In the Heart of the Moon", performed with fellow Malian Toumani Diabate.
Toure died early on Tuesday at his home in the capital, Bamako, after a long struggle with bone cancer.
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.
Toure learned the traditional single-stringed gurkel at an early age, later also taking up the guitar, at which he was also accomplished. He cited many Western musicians for inspiration, including Ray Charles, Otis Redding and John Lee Hooker.
Toure spent much of his later years in his childhood town of Niafunke, near Timbuktu, which has become a pilgrimage spot for many music-loving Africans and tourists seeking one of the original progenitors of a genre known as Mali Blues.
- AP
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South Africa
