For three days Raichel, who produced, and Touré sequestered themselves at Studio Malambo in the outskirts of Paris where they were joined by a number of special guests. But for reasons of logistics, cost and security the artists met in France instead. Since they recorded their first album in Tel Aviv, the plan was to make the follow-up in Bamako. In June of this year, Touré returned to Israel to join Raichel's band The Idan Raichel Project in a performance at Masada, an archeological site of immense significance in Jewish history. They assumed the name The Touré-Raichel Collective and used the material from that first gathering as the basis for an album, The Tel Aviv Session, which found poignant, musically beautiful common ground between the artists’ cultures.ĭue to popular demand, The Touré-Raichel Collective has undertaken multiple international tours and performed on some of the world's most prestigious stages. The chemistry between Touré and Raichel was instant and profound. Raichel invited Touré to Israel, where they assembled a few musicians and convened an unscripted, improvised jam session. Touré’s father, the late great Ali Farka Touré, was one of Raichel's musical heroes and inspirations. They met for the first time by chance, in 2008 at the Berlin airport, where they expressed mutual admiration and a desire to get together and play. As a follow up to their acclaimed 2012 debut, The Tel Aviv Session, the group released The Paris Session on September 30 on the Cumbancha label.Īlthough a collaboration between an Israeli Jew and a Malian Muslim has unavoidable political implications, what inspired Touré and Raichel to work together was not the potential to make a statement they simply connected as artists and friends seeking to find musical common ground. The formation and success of The Touré-Raichel Collective, the band led by Israeli keyboardist and songwriter Idan Raichel and Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Touré-icons in their own countries and abroad-is a reminder of the unique power of music to bridge geographic, ethnic, political and religious differences. It is exquisite, mysterious music."These players delve into the swirling waters of our globalized music culture and pull out bright fish, almost perfect, as if designed instead of conjured in the heat of improvisation." – National Public Radio's All Things Considered In truth, TALKING TIMBUKTU resists easy description. On a tune such as "Soukora" Toure pours out his heart to his lover, as he and Cooder playfully circle each other with bell-like chords and ornaments that sound like a curtain of electric pearls, while Toure's more vivid attack on "Amandral" echoes phrases evocative of John Lee Hooker. Ali Farka Toure's blissful melodic lines do not adhere to traditional blues form, but rather suggest a kind of pre-blues music of African origins. That's because TALKING TIMBUKTU is an epic cross-cultural super-session that captures the deepest spirit of music and transports it across ethnic and stylistic boundaries without demeaning the gift-giver or the gift. but it's something else again-like some pan-ethnic folk music for the 21st century. "Ai Du" sums out to something not unlike the blues or West African music. It's all in there: the droning traditional timbres of Mali in Ali Farka Toure's guitar the deep, mysterious incantations of the Mississippi delta blues in Ry Cooder's slide work the soulful backwoods moan of "Gatemouth" Brown's viola the percolating rhythms of Hamma Sankare and Oumar Toure and the earthy resonant dance of drummer Jim Keltner and bassist John Patitucci. By the time your average listeners get around to the slow, elemental backbeat of "Ai Du," all of their preconceptions about chickens and eggs, roots and fruits or bluesmen and griots have been blurred and obscured by the enchanting music that makes up TALKING TIMBUKTU. TALKING TIMBUKTU won the 1995 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album.