Consumer Guide Album

Khaira Arby: Timbuktu Tarab [Clermont Music, 2010]
Although she's too unreconstructed to inspire much loose talk about feminism, this cousin of Ali Farka Toure's--one of many, I bet--has the gravity and the drive to replace the effectively emeritus Oumou Sangare as Mali's female musical ambassador. Problem is, while this 2010 album is arresting, it's also fatiguing. Of course she's singing in her sand-blasted power contralto, but over 12 tracks it's often more like she's holding forth--after all that hectoring you crave some lilt, the sense that maybe she'll dance a few steps when she does thisone live. Nice theory, only the two liltiest concern "the anguish of women" and "workers returning from the salt mines." She's not getting ready to dance. She's just giving herself time to think. B+