photo provided by Sherri Rase
Ali & Toumani CD cover
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Nonesuch Records' World Circuit Production has just released "Ali and Toumani," the final album in the collaboration between two gifted world music masters. Veterans of a number of albums together, this is the final collaboration before Ali Farka Touré departed this mortal coil. Toumani Diabaté often wondered which of them would go first, and when Ali started to decline, Toumani wanted something to be left behind for their families that would provide remembrance of the style of each.

According to Toumani, Ali's mission was to spread the knowledge of African culture with the beauty of his music. A master of many styles, Ali hailed from Mali, where each region has a distinctive style of music, and that distinct vocabulary may be viewed truly as a dialect, as each has a different way of expressing what's important, while maintaining enough commonality for all to unite. The feel of this album is of an equivalent to African classical music and, as I listened to the virtuosity, I considered that skill is skill is skill the world over. If there is a universal language other than mathematics, it must be music.

Songs like the opening song "Ruby" are described by Toumani as how Ali played for himself. It is originally a Bobo song that Ali had learned in his travels and as he played it on the soft spoken stringed kora, Toumani and his daughter Ruby, five years old at the time, sat at Ali's feet holding their breath so they wouldn't disturb the sound. Ever after Ali would call that song by Ruby's name.

Another song, played as a waltz, reminds us that rhythms vary all over the world as speech does, as modes and scales do, and while at times this can make music very different, at others we find familiar places and rhythms to comfort our meditation.

The music sounds like vacation in an exotic place or, sometimes, like the tintinnabulous of Baroque music on a rainy day. At other times you might find yourself humming tunelessly under your breath with it, but this album is meditative and energizing at the same time. You'll want your own copy-I'm not going to sharing mine any time soon!