Vieux Farka Touré
The Secret
Rating: 3.6/5.0
Label: Six Degrees
The Malian desert bluessmith forges more prismatic, hypnotic sonic quartz on his third album. Sons of African music legends tend to do well for themselves, but there is a certain time when they stop being sons and start deserving treatment as musicians on their own. Vieux Farka Touré had it figured out by his self-titled 2007 debut, taking his father Ali Farka Touré’s sound a few bold steps further, and he only expands on those gains in The Secret.
“Sokosondou” leads off with snappy percussion and dervish-like, twirling guitar. Vieux’s layered vocals lend them a permeating quality similar to a crowd’s while singing in perfect unison, and the song surrounds the ear. Like it, “Aigna” is more conventional desert blues: dragged notes, licks and deft arpeggio picking. Truly unreal stuff. Transitioning between tempos, and occasional instrumentals, the album incorporates several veins of influence in its 12 tracks, but none as much as the feedback cycle linking the Afro-musical diaspora across the Atlantic. The cycle informs blues and jazz with clarity, desert blues with soul, and them all with rhythm (courtesy of Afro-Cuban influences).
As evidenced by his work here and in past albums, slipping into a traditional American blues format doesn’t bring out any weakness in Vieux, and on The Secret he adjusts well enough to the stylistic preferences of a few featured musicians (Dave Matthews, Derek Trucks), but doing so can’t help at times but trip up the otherwise wholly unique content on the record. Although, even a track like “Lakkal (Watch Out),” which falls into this too-familiar mode, is salvaged when the formula is shaken up with a cribbed bridge and some handy work on the keys. “Gido” plays in more established territory as well, segueing into Latin rock frequently.
Naturally, the shadow of his father Ali’s work on Vieux’s runs long; Vieux even recorded The Secret’s title track with him, their final collaboration prior to his death in 2006. While not quite the highlight of the record, Ali’s steady-fingered lead guitar work on it is, as a matter of course, exceptional. On “Ali,” Vieux pays homage to his father, his own guitar writhing in the opening seconds of the track in almost precisely the fashion the elder Touré’s once did. It’s a touching dedication, and all the more effective for Vieux’s expertise.
“Amana Quai” begins in the kind of meandering, earnest way that his and his father’s work with kora player Toumani Diabaté often does: possessing the character of some solemn truth systematically enumerated in a dizzy, drawn-out litany of descending and ascending guitar scales. But in this case the slowly unraveling thread transforms twice over, shedding its pensiveness. In a similar way, “Borei” marries the roughed, rugged desert blues aesthetic with Afrobeat’s marathon percussive sway. And speaking of sway, the one belonging to “Sankara Diadje” is the gentlest, even when Vieux’s voice breaks in, panoramic.
Either packing on picks like vertebrae stacks marking a tune’s skeleton or riding the frets until strings of notes form lethargically-spaced, melodic percussion, Vieux’s certainly got the chops on guitar, and he balances it with impressive vocal turns. Album closer “Touri” sees some of the better guitar and vocal work of the record. The simple organ flourish at the end is straight gospel and soul, but either way it’s probably the most evocative desert blues around.
Which pretty much goes for the rest of The Secret, too.
by Joe Clinkenbeard
Key Tracks: Sankara Diadje, Touri, Sokosondou
