Vieux Farka Touré and Khruangbin’s Donald Johnson Jr talk about collabo project Ali

This album, rightly titled Ali for its reinterpretation of some of Touré Snr’s most resonant compositions, is a nostalgic yet reinvigorating trip down memory lane for those who know the late guitarist’s music, and arguably the best possible introduction for younger listeners who are coming across his name or the music of the Sahel for the first time. The new collection takes the folk-blues sparseness of Ali Farka Touré’s music – its devoutness to natural feel and griot storytelling – and brings it closer to the sensibility of ’90s dub, downtempo or trip hop, where the beat bears less swing, and where Khruangbin bassist Laura Lee’s lines and drummer Donald ‘DJ’ Johnson Jr’s grooves play a more significant role than the original.

There is also fascinating interplay between Vieux Farka Touré’s guitar playing and that of Khruangbin’s Mark Speer, whose approach is informed by deep research into global musical styles, including the guitar techniques of West, Central and East Africa and their adjoined modes and rhythms. 

“When the idea and the concept [of this album] came up, Mark was one of the driving forces to why we jumped on it and definitely said ‘yes’ to doing it, because he has tremendous respect for the work of Ali and Ali as a guitar player,” Johnson Jr tells Music In Africa from the US during a video call alongside Vieux Farka Touré in Bamako, Mali.

“It’s really nice,” Vieux adds. “I’m actually really open to learning how other guitarists do things, how they understand music. But it’s very easy to play with these guys because when you love something, it’s easy to do it.” 

Khruangbin were approached with the concept for Ali while on tour in London, and jumped at the opportunity despite ordinarily exercising caution over collaborations with other artists. 

“With collaborations, people often toss out names of people that we could work with or that we should work with, but the reality of it is that collaborations don’t really work if you don’t hit it off as people, but we hit it off with Vieux as soon as we met,” Johnson Jr says. “He’s such a kind spirit and a wonderful person. And usually, when that’s the case, it translates to what comes out in the studio and in what happens musically, and I think that's apparent in what we were able to accomplish – all in the process honouring the work of Ali Farka Touré.” 

The making of Ali didn’t involve extensive rehearsals and the musicians opted to keep things spontaneous, without overplaying the parts before moving on to track them, which took about a week in Houston with Grammy Award-winning recording engineer Steve Christensen, who is also behind previous Khruangbin releases like Mordechai, Con Todo el Mundo and The Universe Smiles Upon You. This was in 2019 when plans were afoot to release the collection of Ali Farka Touré covers in 2021. But then the pandemic hit and the album’s production was shut down, with the musicians unable to wrap up postproduction until 2021. Notwithstanding its spontaneous approach in the studio, it took a tedious three years to reach the final product. 

This year in early August, the musicians got a chance to perform ‘Mahine Me’ off Ali at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, to an enthusiastic audience, no doubt excited about the collaboration and for being able to attend concerts again.

“The first time playing with Vieux was great,” Johnson Jr says. “All of us were very happy that we got a chance to do that and give that to the people there who got a chance to see it.”

Now that the collaborators have played live, even if only for a moment, can we expect shows back at the source of the album’s music – Africa? “That remains to be seen,” Johnson Jr says. “Of course, that’s something that we would love to do. I’ve never personally set foot on the continent of Africa. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for so long, for obvious reasons. Being an African American person, I did DNA tracing through 23andMe and my roots were traced back to Western Sahara. So, that’s a personal goal of mine. I would love to set foot and go home to the motherland and experience everything it has to offer and just reconnect with my brothers and sisters.” 

Although the music on the eight-track album may be fresh and innovative to the ears of the musicians who have made it and to fans of eclectic music with global influences, one cannot help but wonder what Ali Farka Touré would say about it if he were alive today. Vieux believes that his father’s verdict would be based on a strong father-son connection, and not the music per se.  

“I think he would just be happy if he heard this music. He would ask, ‘How are you guys doing this?’ You know, when I made my first album, which he heard before he died [in 2006], one of my uncles said that he would listen to my album every night. If he were here today to see how we’ve made this music and broken down the boundaries between the US and Africa, he would be very happy,” Vieux says.