Product Description

The final recording from Africa's best known guitarist, described by the artist as his 'best album ever' before his death. Recorded at the legendary Hotel Mande sessions in Bamakoand utilising an internationally renowned ensemble of musicians including Pee Wee Ellis and Fain S. Duenas (Radio Tarifa), this genre-hopping album covers blues, reggae and country, with Toure's distinctive playing style and superbly crafted vocal lines helping to produce an album showing the perfect fusion of African and Western musical styles.

Track Listing

1. Erdi
2. Yer Bounda Fara
3. Beto
4. Savane
5. Soya
6. Penda Yoro
7. Machengoidi
8. Ledi Coumbe
9. Hanana
10. Soko
11. Gambari
12. Banga
13. Njarou

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3584 in Music
• Released on: 2006-07-17
• Number of discs: 1

Observer Music Monthly, June 2006
'The great bluesman's posthumous album is the finest of his career. Remember him this way' Charlie Gillett

Observer Music Monthly, June 2006
'He was a master, and this is his masterpiece' Charlie Gillett

The Guardian, (Robin Denselow), July 14, 2006
(5 stars) This is a set that's remarkable for its sheer variety and passion...it's simply outstanding.

Customer Reviews

A new or the original kind of blues?
I have not heard any of this kind of African blues music before and I have to say I am intrigued - is this what blues was originally like, or something that has evolved as a fusion of blues and african music, or something different entirely.

Whatever it is, what is true is that listening and making music is worth more that analyzing it and writing about the results.

Ignore the reviews about it being the best blues album ever etc etc and just buy it and listen to it. It's a good, atmospheric, interesting record.

Wonderful and worth buying but not "Album of the decade"
'Savane' is the last album Ali Farka Toure recorded, and perhaps in the wake of his passing, the hyperbole surrounding this release reached a peak of superlatives-overload, with the estimable fRoots hailing it "the album of the decade". On that recommendation, and having loved an earlier AFT album ("Niafunke"), I ordered it.

It is fabulously atmospheric, genuinely otherworldly - listening to it takes you out into the Malian desert with Toure's bluesy riffs underpinning each of the tunes, and some harmonica and what sounds like a scratchy violin wailing like a desert wind over the top, a rattling kora drifting in and out and the man himself mumbling his hypnotic and heartfelt lyrics. You can almost feel the dust in your throat and the huge space around you (even in a bedroom in Durham).

But I had expected, from those ecstatic reviews, to be choking back tears of joy and awe and they just didn't come for me. I could be an ignorant oik, of course, but all the tracks have a similar pace and vibe, which may have been deliberate, but there just aren't any gobsmacking moments, apart from the wall of sound created during the tremendous opening track.

So, it's great and a fitting epitaph to the great man, but you know what music journalists are like... They've just got to get their quote on the sticker on the front, haven't they?

Wonderful
One wonders if knowledge of his own mortality drove Toure to produce his two most beautiful and affecting albums-this superb epitaph and the extraordinary In The Heart of the Moon. Many artists knowing of their imminent demise might have retreated into a shell-instead Mr Toure left us these two magnificant heart-rending pieces of African music, encompassing the full breadth of his talent and knowledge, at once both acoustic and electric, heavenly and humane. If you are not inspired and awed by these two albums your heart is dead.