Vieux Farka Toure is the son of West Africa's most famous singer, Ali Toure, who died last fall. Anyway, the son...I think he is about 23 or so....has gotten a lot of good PR, big article in the Boston Globe this week. He's on tour, first stop was at Wesleyan early in February...one of the guys in the band is an American and a Wes grad. When I got to Johnny D's around 10 there were about a hundred people in line, and they were only letting people in if someone left. So I took the path of least resistance and went to Redbones for a beer. When I went back the line was down to 20 and a lot of people were leaving as the first set ended, so it was easy in.West African rock has a different style and feel. Metallic sounding guitars, high, haunting vocals, an incredibly infectious back beat that makes you want to dance, and long songs that go off on adventures and then come back to where they started ......the whole hour-long second set had a total of maybe four songs. The place was packed, the crowd enthusiastic, the music engaging. If you were in a club in Bamako or Dakar or Lagos, is this the kind of music you'd hear?
1 comment:
Damn.. I missed this. I only came to know about Ali Farka Toure when he died last year but since then had seen some videos of Vieux on Youtube and really loved them.
Saw Diabate yesterday though. Heaven!
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