After all, wasn’t Ali Farka Touré once described as the black John Lee Hooker? And you only have to look at recent album titles by Malian artists such as Lobi Traoré (Mali Blue) and Bassékou Kouyate (Niger Blue) to trace the affiliation. But the precise nature of the relationship between traditional music from Mali and the American blues (which emerged shortly after the abolition of slavery) remains fraught with ambiguity.

In 2003, as part of a series tracing the history of the blues, the American director Martin Scorsese made the documentary Mali to Mississippi, following guitarist Corey Harris as he travelled from the south of Mississippi to Mali, "the source of the blues." Stopping off along the way to chat to veteran American bluesmen, Corey finally hooked up with the legendary Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré. But the farmer-musician from Niafunké was none too keen on the classification "Malian blues." Sitting under a tree on the banks of the river Niger, Ali Farka Touré told Corey that, "In my opinion, there’s no such thing as black Americans. There are simply blacks in America. What happened was the blacks left and took their culture with them."

Ali Farka Touré judged his American "brothers" fairly harshly at times, complaining that "these tunes were never made to go with scotch, whisky or beer!" He fiercely defended the fact that the music he played was homegrown and purely traditional, his compositions inspired by the pentatonic rhythms of the Songhai, the Peul, the Tamashek, the Bozo and the Bela (the principal ethnic groups in northern Mali). And yet, there seems little doubt about it, Ali Farka Touré’s playing style was also influenced by American bluesmen, notably John Lee Hooker of whom the great Malian guitarist was a self-avowed fan.

Ali Farka Touré declared that "They (the Americans) have got the branches and the leaves, but we’ve got the trunk and the roots." But the relationship between Mali and Mississippi appears to have been more closely interwoven than that even. In the 1960s, listeners to Radio Mali discovered the ultra-bluesy Mali Twist while further afield Boubacar Traoré (better known to fans as Kar Kar) was compared to the seminal American bluesman Robert Johnson.

An American invention

As for Ali Farka’s nephew, Afel Bocoum, who appears to have inherited his uncle’s take on the Mali/Mississippi connection, he seems more amused than anything else about attempts to link traditional Malian music and the American blues. "People go round talking about 'Bambara blue' or 'Niger blue', but I’d call it Ségalaré or Njérou because that’s what my music’s called. The blues was invented by our black brothers in America, but don’t forget it’s a result of our music that they left behind. You can’t deny they’ve got something in their blood… But over here in Mali we don’t have blues in our blood. Blues was their creation. The music I play is purely and simply African."

Afel Bocoum has a point. In the early 17th century, the black slaves shipped off to the United States (the majority of whom came from West Africa) were not familiar with the blues. Labouring away on the plantations, they sang a capella work songs connected to Africa but which made reference to the harshness of their new life in America. Certain vocal techniques, not to mention rhythms and harmonies were also transposed to their new environment. Up until the 19th century, purely African songs and dances were still widespread throughout the south of the United States. But the abolition of slavery in 1865 cut these last direct ties with Africa. Interestingly enough, musicologists of the time considered this African heritage to be a musical "aberration", talking of "rebel sounds" to describe these notes that were unknown to Western scales but ultimately went on to become the foundation of the scales used in the blues.

In Ségou, another region of Mali located along the banks of the river Niger, musicians claim a kinship between their traditional Griot music and the American blues. Bassékou Kouyate, the son and grandson of famous n’goni-players from the region, reworked 18th-century music from the royal court of Ségou on his album Ségou Blue. According to Kouyate, the ngoni (a traditional three or four-stringed lute) is the oldest, and least well-known, of Mali’s instrument. "On the n’goni, an instrument which has been around since the 13th century, you can play notes you could never get on a guitar," he says, "Traditional Bambara music from Ségou uses Bara, Bozo and Koredjugua rhythms which are similar to the blues. And the griot music that was played for the king is based on a pentatonic scale. But it isn’t blues! It’s based on traditional rhythms played on traditional instruments. This is where the roots of blues lie!"

The bending notes

Kouyate says he once saw antique banjos in the States which bore a striking resemblance to the n’goni. But after the abolition of slavery in 1865, it was the guitar that became the most popular string instrument there. However, in order to obtain the same notes as on the banjo, musicians had to invent the "bending notes" (as the famous notes used in blues are called). The blues was born around the same period at a time when former slaves, freed from the plantations, were able to buy a small plot of land. Sitting alone with their instruments, they were free to muse on the fact that the rest of their days would probably roll out on the American continent.

In his book Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1968), LeRoi Jones, an American professor, political activist, poet and playwright, expounds on his theory that the blues, sung in Afro-American, is the essential American experience of the black community and one of the foundations of American citizenship. According to Jones, the birth of the blues corresponds to the birth of Black Americans. Marcus James, an American musician who was very close to Ali Farka Touré in his lifetime and is also an expert on Malian music and the history of the blues, wonders whether "it is precisely because we have experienced pentatonic modes in the blues that we automatically link pentatonic music to the blues?" According to James, the blues, sung in English, is the result of the pain and alienation experienced by blacks in America - and thus a music deeply rooted on the banks of the Mississippi.

Meanwhile, Ali Farka Touré, like the Songhai musicians, the Tamashek musicians and the griots from Ségou, celebrates the beauty of nature in his songs, paying homage to the gods and his traditional lineage. And it is perhaps this immense gulf between the spiritual and the physical that most differentiates traditional Malian music from the American blues. In Mali, music has always been the preserve of the free.

Eglantine Chabasseur
Translation: Julie Street