20 veils is 19 too many...the Sidi Toure interview

I've got a short interview piece with Sidi Toure up now at Blurt, which turned out pretty well I think, given that it was done through email and a translator. Actually I was just thinking about Sidi Toure and wondering if he was doing okay, given the civil war in Gao these days....hope he's keeping his head down.

READY, SET, GAO! Sidi Touré

On his second American album the spiritually-minded African guitar maestro brings his Songhaï roots - and its culture of sharing - to the masses.

BY JENNIFER KELLY

"I always compare music to a married woman," says Malian guitarist Sidi Touré. "When she goes to the town hall she wears a veil, but if she wears twenty veils she's going to suffocate. Music has to breathe!"

That's one way of saying that latest album Koïma is more richly ornamented album than 2011's Sahel Folk (reviewed here), but only to a point. Where the U.S. debut was a series of voice and guitar duets, recorded casually at Touré's sister's home, Koïma brings in calabash, bass, multiple guitars and a back-up singer. It's a denser, more animated realization of Touré's Songhaï roots, a culture that he explains is centered around sharing - of food, of joy and, most of all, of music.

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My year-end is up

Read all about it here. By the way, there's a button you can press to listen to music from my list while you're reading. It obviously doesn't work on dial-up (what does?) but if anyone wants to try it and tell me what it's like, that'd be cool.

Or, skip the words, and just check out the list:
1. Skull Defekts, Peer Amid (Thrill Jockey)
2. Psychic Paramount, II (Important)
3. David Kilgour, Left by Soft (Merge)
4. King Creosote and Jon Hopkins, Diamond Mine (Domino)
5. Dirtbombs, Party Store (In the Red)
6. Gem Club, Breakers (Hardly Art)
7. Mogwai, Hard Core Will Never Die But You Will (Sub Pop)
8. Sidi Toure, Sahel Folk (Thrill Jockey)
9. UV Race, Homo (In the Red)
10. Bonnie Prince Billy, Wolfroy Comes to Town (Drag City)
11. Veronica Falls, Veronica Falls (Slumberland)
12. Bats, Free All the Monsters (Flying Nun)
13. Sole and the Skyrider Band, Hello Cruel World (Fake Four)
14. Demdike Stare, Tryptych (Modern Love)
15. Get Help, The Good Green Earth (Midriff)
16. Arrica Rose and the Dot, Dot Dots, Let Alone Sea (PopRock)
17. Sam Phillips, Solid State (Littlebox)
18. Emperor X, Western Transport (Bar/None)
19. Ty Segall, Goodbye Bread (Drag City)
20. Bad Sports, Kings of the Weekend (Dirtnap)

Side Toure live

My review of the Sidi Toure show went up yesterday at Blurt.

Intricate, staccato sounds drift out onto the street on a warm, October night, the plink of something like banjo pattering against ringing lattice work of guitar and an insistent percussive sound halfway between slap and pop bass and blues guitar. It's hard to believe that there aren't any drums in play, as Malian guitarist Sidi Touré holds court, flanked by two musicians, the one on his left Jambala Maiga, playing a small gourd-shaped instrument called a kuntigui, the one on his left, Douma Maiga, a pair of elongated one- and two-stringed kurbus, and he, in the middle, wielding a traditional guitar, though one bent to some strange, evocative desert sounds.

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"Bon Kum"

Happy Friday…new music from Sidi Touré

If you’ve been into Malian guitar blues a la Tinawarin, Salif Keita and Ali Farka Toure, check out Sahel Folk from Sidi Touré. It’s out this week on Thrill Jockey and just beautiful. My Blurt review says:

A swiveling, downward guitar lick begins "Bon Koum" from Sahel Folk, the second disc from Songhai bluesman Sidi Tour. Its contours are geometrically precise and sharply delineated against deep silence. Yet listen harder and the contours begin to bend and shimmer in the desert heat. Open spaces appear amid carefully plotted phrases, and antic falsetto runs skitter across the free spaces. Touré's voice, quietly resonant and full of shadows, booms up out of the picking, a counterpart that rises where the guitar riff falls. The music is full of taut contradictions, disciplined rhythms and wild flights of fancy, deep serenity and palpable longing, the heat of rapid picking alongside unhurried, contemplative cool.

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There's another video at Thrill Jockey, which I don't know how to embed. Go here.


TGIF, right? What a week.