As the first African bluesman to achieve widespread popularity on his home continent, Touré was often known as "the African
John Lee Hooker". Musically, the many superpositions of guitars and rhythms in his music were similar to John Lee Hooker's hypnotic blues style. He usually sang in one of several
African languages, mostly
Songhay,
Fulfulde,
Tamasheq or
Bambara as a
sound engineer at
Radio Mali in
Bamako. This allowed him the opportunity to use the radio station's recording studio, which at the time was the only recording studio in Mali. Touré sent tapes of his recordings to various record labels in
France and eventually ended up releasing a series of albums simply titled ‘Ali Farka Touré’ in the late 70s and early 80s. In 1986 Touré captured the attention of the British market when tracks from one of his albums referred to as ‘the red album’ was played on British radio. British DJ
Andy Kershaw discovered ‘the red album’ whilst in
Paris looking for records that were difficult to find in the UK. He recalls how he purchased the album at random from amongst a pile of others as its cover had stood out to him. Upon listening to it after returning home to North
London he realised he had found something special. Upon playing a few tracks during his segment on
BBC Radio One, it provoked an extraordinary reaction from his listeners. It was this that grasped the attention of Anne Hunt of 'World Circuit Records'. In the mid-1980s, Hunt travelled to Mali to track down Touré and eventually found him by broadcasting a message on Radio Mali seeking information about his whereabouts. World Circuit Records brought him to Britain for the first time in autumn 1987 to record
Ali Farka Touré, by which time he had also begun touring outside Africa - including at Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, USA on 10 April 1987, although Touré's first North American concert was in
Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia.. Ultimately he recorded seven albums with World Circuit Records, some of which included contributions from non-African musicians such as
Seán Keane and
Kevin Conneff of
The Chieftains on the album
The River in 1990 and
Nitin Sawhney and the American blues player
Taj Mahal on
The Source in 1992. Touré's most high-profile collaboration of the early 90s was 1994's
Talking Timbuktu with
Ry Cooder. This sold well in Western markets although Cooder later recalled how Touré didn't like recording the album in the Hollywood studio and described it as a place of ‘bad energy’ and the USA in general as a ‘spiritual car park’. In 2005 Touré recorded "Bèrèbèrè", a song duet with Malian guitarist and singer Idrissa Soumaoro which was released on Soumaoro's second album
Djitoumou. Thirteen years later, Bèrèbèrè – meaning "to help each other" in
Bambara, Mali's national language – was used in the 2018 Marvel Studios film
Black Panther to illustrate the moment when leading characters T'Challa and Nakia walk through a market after a long separation. In September 2005, Touré released the album
In the Heart of the Moon, a collaboration with
Toumani Diabaté, for which he received a second Grammy award. since 1968.
Savane was received with wide acclaim by professionals and fans alike and was nominated for a
Grammy Award in the category "Best Contemporary World Music Album". The panel of experts from the World Music Chart Europe (WMCE), a chart voted by the leading World Music specialists around Europe, chose
Savane as their Album of the Year 2006, with the album topping the chart for three consecutive months (September to November 2006). The album has also been listed as No. 1 in the influential
Metacritic's "Best Albums of 2006" poll, and No. 5 in its all-time best reviewed albums. == Personal life ==