Savane

Ali Farka Toure - Savane

Savane
List Price: $11.98
Our Price: $8.43
You Save: $3.55 (30%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $6.53 (click here)
Category: Music CD
See more CD details
Listen soundtracks from this album



(Click here)
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store

CD Details

Artist: Ali Farka Toure
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-07-25
Music Label: Nonesuch
Soundtracks:
  1. Erdi
  2. Yer Bounda Fara
  3. Beto
  4. Savane
  5. Soya
  6. Penda Yoro
  7. Machengoidi
  8. Ledi Coumbe
  9. Hanana Soko
  10. Gambari
  11. Banga
  12. Njarou

Music reviews of Savane

Music Review: Farewell, Brave Friend
Rating: 5 Stars

One of the incredible tragedies in Music this year is the passing of Ali Farka Toure. It is impossible to exagerate his importance to African, Malian, Blues, World musics. He is as seminal figure as anyone in any discipline. Last year he recorded the mystically beautiful IN THE HEART OF THE MOON with Toumani Diabete, and this record as well as Diabete's magical SYMMETRY ORCHESTRA recording just out were recorded nearly simultaneously in the same hotel as the MOON sessions.
Toure's hypnotic guiatr work is set to haunting effect alongside ngoni players like Mama Sissoko, American sax player and Van Morrison collaborator Pee Wee Ellis, calabash virtuouso Souleye Kane, and percussionists like Oumar Toure. This is the cream of Mali's traditional music set, and some of the best international sidemen you can have. For Ellis, it must have been a career highpoint to join in such august company and he plays as though this may never happen again.
And sadly, it will not. These are love songs, songs about life along a river, songs of politics and wisdom that ring with an authenticity that almost all of today's music lacks. There are few if any African-Americans whose records could hold a candle to this, let alone white, Carribbean, or any other ethnicity. This is music born of a culture that transcends those identifying markers and reaches into that which is quintessentially human in all of us. Considering that Human Life likely started in these environs, that should not be surprising. That Toure can articulate what is so primally essential to life and bring forth such brilliant contributions from his collaborators set this effort on a plain few have even thought about reaching.
This is the blues. Close your eyes, forget the language differences, and it is the voice of John Lee Hooker, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Asie Payton crying out from the Delta, from the northern Mississippi fields. It is a call that began with the dawn of man and continues to call him home. It is the struggle and the passion, the poetic and the political, the directions in the human soul that seek peace, love, justice a safe and clean home, a regard for the planet as a nuturing place instead of a field to be exploited. And in what may yet prove to be his most prophetic call, the last song on the CD, "N'Jarou" tells the story of a brave man who resisted both the tyranny of white colonialization and the the chains of expansionsit Islam to be true to what he knew in his heart and soul. In a Greek context, we might call this Socratic. In any context, it is profound.
This is not a dance record. It is meant to be listened to thoughtfully. While "Savane" speaks literally about a drought and the damage wrought thereby in the savannahs, metaphorically, Toure is talking about the drought in our hearts and souls in these times we live in. We ought to listen carefully to this marvellous griot's valedictory farewell.
More Savane free music reviews:
1 2 3

Description of Savane

Toure recorded Savane in the Malian capital of Bamako, as part of a three-disc project dubbed the Hotel Mande Sessions, after the studio in which the albums were cut. Savane is the last, perhaps most eloquent, installment. In concept and execution, the sessions recall teh magical combination of spontaneity and virtuosity that marked the debut releases from the Buena Vista Social Club. Toure offers reverberating, incantatory vocals to accompany his lean, hypnotically repetitive guitar lines.
Savane, the great African guitarist and bluesman Ali Farka Touré's final solo studio album, was recorded in his native Mali toward the end of his life, when the artist knew his days were numbered. He spent his last years in his home village of Niafunké, concentrating on farming and family matters, jamming with local musicians of an evening. This impassioned, roots-drenched, mostly acoustic valedictory finds the Maestro's stalking rhythms and high-noon-at-the-crossroads, dusty desert-to-delta vocals in no less than life-summing form. "Soya" (track 5) seems to stand still in a million directions, while "Hanana Soko" (track 9) features a searing njarka fiddle spinning delirious circles around its throaty accompanying percussion. Pee Wee Ellis (sax) and Little George Sueref (harmonica) each manage to make strong impressions while adhering to the groove at hand. Afel Boucoum, a talented younger musician who has been mentioned as Touré's most likely successor (as if such a thing were possible!), graces "Njarou," the last tune. The other players are also at the top of their game, as fluttering ngoni (a West African spike lute) riffs weave in and out and airy female vocals float like a breeze off the river Niger. There are reports that Touré senior sat in on his son's upcoming album and scads of archival material will undoubtedly materialize. But his unsentimental, voluptuously masculine, spirit-guided magic is captured at its best, for all time, in this magnificent farewell. --Christina Roden

International CDs

Music Genres
Bestsellers in International CDs
Wishful Way ImageHopscotch - Wishful Way
Release date: 2003-11-03; Music CD
Price in other shops: $20.99
Coral Sea Dreaming [VHS] ImageDavid Hannan - Coral Sea Dreaming [VHS]
Compass Records; Release date: 1998-11-17; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $6.25
Price in other shops: $19.98
20th Anniversary Celebration [VHS] ImageSteeleye Span - 20th Anniversary Celebration [VHS]
Shanachie; Release date: 1995-04-16; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $5.94
Price in other shops: $24.98
Return of the Fabulous Hofner Bluenotes ImageChris Rea - Return of the Fabulous Hofner Bluenotes
Release date: 2008-03-11; Music CD
Best price: $38.91
Price in other shops: $67.97
A Concert Of Angels mini: Music From J.S. Bach To Gustav Mahler ImageA Concert Of Angels mini: Music From J.S. Bach To Gustav Mahler
by edel Classics GmbH
Edel Classica Gmbh; Published: 2006-11-06; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.69
Price in other shops: $14.95
Tanzkurs Vol. 4 - Rumba & Cha Cha Cha ImageTanzkurs Vol. 4 - Rumba & Cha Cha Cha
Release date: 2007-06-08; DVD
Best price: $10.91
Price in other shops: $23.32
Peter Und Der Wolf/Karneval Der Tiere ImageSascha Hehn & The New Symphonic Orchestra - Peter Und Der Wolf/ Karneval Der Tiere
Release date: 2010-04-27; Music CD
Best price: $7.47
Edgar Allan Poe: Das Grauen II ImageJurgen Fritsche, Sven Gortz - Edgar Allan Poe: Das Grauen II
Release date: 2009-12-08; Music CD
Best price: $6.30
Price in other shops: $8.98
Sorene. CD. Kinderlieder aus Äthiopien - Children's Songs from Ethiopia ImageSorene. CD. Kinderlieder aus Äthiopien - Children's Songs from Ethiopia
by Peter Pannke
Sunnymoon Distribution; Published: 2000-03-01; Audio CD; Book
Tibetan Meditation Music: For Quiet Mind and Peaceful Heart ImageTibetan Meditation Music: For Quiet Mind and Peaceful Heart
by Nawang Khechog
Soundstrue; Sounds True 2007-04-01; Published: 2007; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $0.01
Similar CDs
Segu Blue ImageBassekou Kouyate, Ngoni Ba - Segu Blue
Release date: 2007-05-11; Music CD
Best price: $11.10
Price in other shops: $16.98
Red & Green ImageAli Farka Toure - Red & Green
Release date: 2005-05-10; Music CD
Best price: $12.99
Price in other shops: $21.96
Radio Mali ImageAli Farka Toure - Radio Mali
Release date: 1999-09-28; Music CD
Best price: $6.59
Price in other shops: $11.98
Tassili ImageTinariwen - Tassili
Release date: 2011-08-29; Music CD
Best price: $9.78
Price in other shops: $15.98
Source ImageAli Farka Toure - Source
Release date: 1993-06-15; Music CD
Best price: $31.25
Niafunke ImageAli Farka Toure - Niafunke
Release date: 1999-06-22; Music CD
Best price: $17.99
New Ancient Strings ImageBallake Sissoko, Toumani Diabate - New Ancient Strings
DIABATE/SISSOKO; Release date: 1999-06-22; Music CD
Best price: $7.42
Price in other shops: $11.98
Ali & Toumani ImageAli Farka Toure, Toumani Diabate - Ali & Toumani
Release date: 2010-02-23; Music CD
Best price: $13.23
Price in other shops: $18.98
Talking Timbuktu ImageAli Farka Toure - Talking Timbuktu
Release date: 2006-05-09; Music CD
Best price: $19.71
Price in other shops: $36.49
In The Heart of the Moon ImageAli Farka Toure, Toumani Diabate - In The Heart of the Moon
Release date: 2005-09-13; Music CD
Best price: $10.94
Price in other shops: $18.98
Compare prices and find music notes for more than one million Music CD titles