Vieux Farka Touré

Boureima "Vieux" Farka Touré (born 12 March 1981) is a Malian singer, guitarist and composer, born at Niafunké, the son of Ali Farka Touré. ^{1 2} He took up the guitar in secret despite his father's discouragement and followed his father into Malian desert blues with albums such as Fondo (2009), Mon Pays (2013) and Les Racines (2022), and recorded Ali (2022) with Khruangbin, covering his father's songs. ¹

He was born at Niafunké in Mali in 1981, the son of Ali Farka Touré; the English article gives his full birth date as 12 March 1981, while Wikidata carries only the year. ^{1 2} Despite his father's discouragement and his family's lineage as a tribe of soldiers, he secretly took up the guitar and enrolled in the Institut National des Arts in Bamako. ¹

To produce his debut, Eric Herman of Modiba had to obtain permission from his father, from Toumani Diabaté and from other community elders; the self-titled album was released by World Village on 12 February 2007 and featured Toumani Diabaté and his late father, who had died in 2006. ¹ A remix album, UFOs Over Bamako, followed in 2008, and his second studio album Fondo (2009) peaked at number 5 on Billboard's World Albums chart in the week of 11 July 2009; in June 2010 he performed at the opening celebration of the FIFA World Cup in South Africa and released his first live album. ¹

The Secret (24 May 2011), produced by Eric Krasno, features Dave Matthews, Derek Trucks and John Scofield, and contains the last collaboration between Touré and his late father; it reached number one on CMJ's New World chart. ¹ Mon Pays ("My Country", 28 May 2013) is a reminder of Mali's beauty and culture amid the territorial conflict that had threatened it since January 2012. ¹ Samba (2017), recorded before a live studio audience in Woodstock, takes its name from his childhood nickname — "Samba" means "second boy" in Songhai — and Les Racines (10 June 2022) returns to his father's desert-blues roots; in September 2022 he released Ali with the Houston group Khruangbin, an album of his father's songs. ¹ With the Israeli singer-songwriter Idan Raichel he formed the Touré-Raichel Collective, whose albums are The Tel Aviv Session (2012) and The Paris Session (2014). ¹

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

In his father's shadow, and out of it. The English article documents the paradox of his start: a father who discouraged his son from music, a son who learned guitar in secret, and then the late father's playing appearing on the son's debut and on The Secret — until Ali (2022) made the tribute explicit, an album of the father's songs. ¹ A reviewer in Monolith Cocktail praised Samba as "the devotional, earthy soul of Mali, channeled through a six-string electric guitar". ¹

His faith. Neither the English nor the French article, and not Wikidata either, states a religion, legal school or order for Vieux Farka Touré; his father's fame, his family's soldier lineage and the devotional quality reviewers hear in his music are background and repertoire, not an attestation of a personal school, so the museum records his faith as unknown. ^{1 3 2}

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.