Vieux Farka Touré – Hollywood Avondale: Feb 21, 2023

Vieux Farka Touré brought the exotic sounds of north-western Africa and World music to the Hollywood Theatre in a stunning virtuoso show.

Boureima Vieux Farka Touré is the son of celebrated musician Ali Farka Touré, a pioneer of desert blues and soul brother to John Lee Hooker, a practitioner of primal, tribal gut-bucket blues himself. Ali and Ry Cooder also produced a magical album of sinuous Afro blues, Talking Timbuktu in 1994, of which the music that Vieux delves into is so reminiscent of.

Father tried everything to discourage his son from becoming a musician, due to the difficulties he encountered. He pushed for the military as a better career path. Of course, passion and art have its way if it is a calling. Vieux is also involved in social activism in Mali.

They are a three-piece power trio on stage tonight. The engine room of bass guitar and percussion behind Vieux’s six-strings.

They start the show with Vieux playing acoustic guitar. Spanish riffs, high celestial tones mixing with down beat chords. The calabash, an African percussion instrument as a wooden half-sphere, is played in the talking drums style of West Africa. Like the Ju-Ju music of King Sunny Ade. Primitive blended with sophisticated. You can hear references to the style of Tinariwen, and to early Creole sounds coming from Louisiana via Haiti.

Call and response vocals on the next song. High tone flourishes on the guitar whilst the bass lays down an off-beat accented bottom.

Third song in and the guitarist switches to electric, with ringing R’n’B licks. The drum kit is now in play and it is a familiar western four on the floor beat. This is where electrified city blues and tribal folk music meet. It is sweet and melodic, and the backbone is loose like a snake.

Vieux has a tenor voice with a sharp cutting edge. He is more Robert Johnson than Charley Patton. Patton being tribal and incorporating American Indian along with the older Black roots. More Otis Rush than Muddy or Wolf.

WhyFi And Friends

The ensemble that open the show is a loose collective centered around Larsen Tito-Taylor who goes under the handle WhyFi.

The group tonight includes Jeff Henderson saxophone and bass guitar, Eamon Edmundsen-Wells double bass, Riki Gooch drums, Abigail Aroha Jensen percussion, woodwinds and gadgets. Whyfi is playing guitars, conch and flutes, and there is a second guitarist who I can only identify as Pule?

So, they are jazz musicians and associated with Noa Records, of which WhyFi is a prime mover and influencer.

A single piece tonight which covers close to 25 minutes.

Starts with the sound of the conch, followed by woodwinds and lots of rattles and shakes. A pastoral sound of a forest at night. Sounds of the environment and the overhead atmosphere.

The electric guitars enter with melodic surf tones. Henderson has switched to electric bass and intertwines with the double bass.

The twin guitars can lay down Michael Bloomfield style melody lines. They can also shimmer like Talking Heads Once in a Lifetime.

The volume and intensity rise. Drums come over the top. Metal guitars mesh and wail.

They resolve into a familiar noir jazz saxophone and end it in an extended coda of forest sounds. Coming back full circle.

Mostly improvised I imagine. Captivating, as talented musicians can achieve when stretching out and breaking through the forms.

Vieux Farka Touré

Into the fifth song and a mild explosion to the brain as the guitarist sounds like African Hendrix. Think Voodoo Chile, the live Woodstock version. The bass is playing an undulating Afro funk rhythm. Let yer backbone slip. Rising up in the gumbo, New Orleans tribal chant and drone. The polyrhythms lock in. Vieux even attempts a mini duck walk.

Next song is introduced as Our Country. Which means it must come from the Mon Pays album. This really is fifties Chicago blues mutated with Mali. The drummer could be from Muddy Waters band, and he takes a solo. The guitar answers with some metal shredding.

Samba Si Kaire is a mosaic. Flamenco guitar morphs into Middle Eastern tones. Dick Dale surfing in from Africa. This has the melodic tones that Khruangbin brought to the recent album Ali, also a tribute to his father.

The music sounds more familiar to western ears now. The power trio comes up with several Led Zeppelin guitar lines cribbed from Physical Graffiti.

When the singer sounds like a clarion across the plains, he reminds me of I Can’t Quit You Babe. Both Otis Rush and Robert Plant.

Quieter numbers are melodic soulful jazz.

When the bass player takes the lead, they sound the closest to hard American funk. The drums detonate a few bombs too.

A jam close to the end. I Can’t Turn You Loose done African style. The sound becomes elemental as the guitar steps on the accelerator to go speed metal.

Vieux Farka Touré was a blast of hot desert blues and much more besides.

Rev Orange Peel

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