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03/08/2006:

"Ali Farka Toure"

Ali Farka Toure, who has died of bone cancer in the Malian capital Bamako in his late 60s, was the finest, most influential and best-loved guitarist in Africa. The "godfather of the desert blues", he was the first African musician to show, through his often hypnotic, rhythmic and self-assured playing, that the blues had originated in his home country, out on the edge of the Sahara.
His work certainly echoed the blues - and, in particular, the playing of John Lee Hooker - but it was a comparison that first boosted his career, and then infuriated him. He told me that he played African music, not blues, and that "this music has been taken from here. I play traditional music and I don't know what blues is. For me, blues is a type of soap powder."

Though Toure was the first of a long line of great musicians from Mali to find fame in the west, he insisted that music was not the only interest in his life. He toured the world and won his first Grammy for his 1994 collaboration with Ry Cooder, Talking Timbuktu, then retreated to his home town of Niafunke, on the banks of the Niger river in north-west Mali, where he devoted his time to farming and his role as the local mayor, spending the money he earned from his albums on irrigation and development schemes that transformed the region, making it self-sufficient for food.
guardian.co.uk