Posthumously Ali

Ali Farka Toure has been called the bluesman of Mali. His style of play has been compared to John Lee Hooker, a name I'm not that familiar with. I've always preferred Toure's style more than home grown blues, maybe because I like his voice more than the blues I listen to (which isn't much). I'd also have to say I like the fact that he doesn't sing in English. His voice then becomes more of a vocal instrument.

While Toure's music is uniformly good, there's is a feeling that if you've heard one of Toure's albums, you've basically heard them all. That may be a bias I have where you want musicians to change their styles or evolve it so that you don't say "that sounds exactly like song X".

Toure released Savane posthumously, meaning that he recorded it when he was still alive, but it was released after his death (of course).

I haven't put Toure into much rotation lately, so coming back to hear his music after that is refreshing. I do think, in his last album, that there are some changes. In any case, I'm going to listen to the rest of the album and enjoy.