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| Images © Banning Eyre (Afropop.org) |
According to the BBC, Toure was once quoted as saying: "For some people, Timbuktu is a place at the end of nowhere. But that's not true, I'm from Timbuktu, and I can tell you that it's right in the centre of the world."
He was an international recording superstar, but seemed to care more about his farm--if you can believe that! Much more, actually. He hoped it would transform the area around his hometown into a food basket to feed his extended family and dozens more, he told BBC correspondent Joan Baxter. "This life is better," he told her. "That other life was a bit like dried dung; it didn't stick to my shoes. Whatever I produce it stays here. If God gives me big buildings in the United States or Canada or Japan or Sydney or Germany, can I put them in my pocket and bring them back? No, it's impossible."
According to Baxter: "He said he was working to improve the life of his family and to live in solidarity with others. 'If I eat, they eat. What I drink, they drink. What I wear, they wear. And I live with the river all the time,' he said." Sounds to me like he had something figured out. I'm listening to his music as I write this. I found it at a used CD store in Washington, D.C. for five bucks. To whomever sold it to
them for less than that: SHAME!A bit on his music:
In the 1980s, Ali became swept up in the burgeoning world music frenzy in England. BBC broadcaster Andy Kershaw was mad about an album he had come across and this man simply had to be found. Soon came the “African bluesman” tag, and decades of discussion about whether John Lee Hooker influenced Ali, or Ali held the ancient keys to Hooker’s magic. Ali never wavered in his contention that American blues musicians were playing half-remembered Malian music, songs whose origins they could not possibly comprehend. If this at times sounded arrogant, it was always delivered with a smile, and often an obscure aphorism: “Honey does not taste sweet in only one mouth.”
- from the inimitable African music Web site Afropop Worldwide
He was a great man and a great musician--but I can't begin to do him justice on either front. To start to get a sense of who he was, check out the brief remembrances posted by former BBC correspondent Joan Baxter and Afropop Worldwide's Senior Editor Banning Eyre, and maybe put on some of his music while you do it. (Check Afropop's site for a streaming feature or podcast.)