The O-town Scene - Oneonta, NY
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/17438
Music Notes from Mark Boshnack There’s a world of music out there, if you know where to sounds. This album dates from 1994, and I was sad to find that Toure died from bone cancer in 2006. look. I’m a big fan of all kinds of sounds, as I hope to illustrate in this and future col- umns. There is nothing I like better, when I have the time, than to hunt for new and interest- ing music. This not only includes all kinds of rock, but electronic, jazz and classical, and pretty much everything in between. The NPR website is a steady source of listening pleasure. The “first listen” link plays upcoming albums before they are released. Not long ago, this pro- vided the opportunity to hear Arcade Fire’s new and excellent release, “The Suburbs.” The jazz link gave me the opportunity to discov- er the incredible piano- based jazz of the Vijay Iyer Trio’s, “Historicity.” Thanks to the proliferation of legal Inter- net options, including MySpace, YouTube, even National Geographic, the search for new sounds has become easier, limited only by time. I use those sites and others, along with the local library, radio stations, particularly Oneonta’s WUOW, and magazines, such as “Rolling Stone,” “Spin” and “Songlines,” to go on the hunt. Exploring the music of other cultures always provide some surprises. One such journey began for me several years ago at the Huntington Memorial Library in Oneonta, when I took out a CD I was always interested in but never got a chance to listen to completely before. “Talking Timbuktu” is a collaboration of two guitarist greats: well-known American session man Ry Cooder, and Malian Ali Farka Toure. It opened my ears to some of the music 8 O-Town Scene Oct. 7, 2010 of west Africa, in the same way that Paul Simon’s Graceland did for South African Some musical historians have said that west Africa was the home of the American blues. This can be heard clearly on the song “Amandrai.” Understanding the language is not impor- tant as the music which speaks of universal feelings of love and loss. Toure also has a body of work with the Malian kora player, Toumani Diabate. The kora is a 21 string instrument that in the hands of the master is like nothing else, a combination of harp and lute. The two released two albums together, the most recent, “Ali and Toumani “came out this year. A good place to start to get to know this work is on an instrumental on YouTube, called “Kala Djula.” While there, you should check out other works by Diabate, such as “Cantelowes” from his solo “Mande Variations.” Readers who love rock and the blues should also check out the performance on YouTube, of Toure’s son, Vieux Farka Toures. He sings a version of “Ai Du,” that was also on the “Talking Timbuktu” allbum. Vieux released a CD last year called “Fondo.” The first track, “Fafa, “shows that he will keep the tradition of his father and others for future generations. A check on his MySpace pages shows he recently released a live album that I will definitely be listening to soon. I will save a discussion of my discovery of another Malian group, Tinariwen, for another time. But readers should seek them out on YouTube or other sites. The song “Cler Achel” from “Aman Iman: Water Is Life,” is a great place to start. In my next column I will be talking about some finds a lot closer to home.