Ali Farka Touré With Ry Cooder – Talking Timbuktu

I think it must be the heat that’s making me reach for this record again and again recently. Listen to ‘Amandrai’, the sluggish, stubbornly-chugging-along track at the album’s midpoint and tell me it doesn’t sound like it was made to be played strictly at temperatures of 35°C and up.

The album is the result of a collaboration between Malian superstar Ali Farka Touré and the American guitar-chameleon Ry Cooder - recorded at the latter’s studio when the former had traveled from his home in Timbuktu to the US for a tour.

Joined by members of Ali Farka Touré’s band as well as compatriots of Ry Cooder, the resulting sound is a shifting blend of traditional Malian rhythms and instrumentations, Touré’s signature West-African ‘desert blues’, and swampy, sweaty Americana.

Sometimes pulsing and hypnotic, sometimes joyous, sometimes drifting - but all of it sounding like I too can keep things moving even when it’s too hot to think. It’s a record that’s been keeping me sane these days, and I hope it helps you a little, too.

~ Berry

Check out the album on Spotify or elsewhere