Consumer Guide Album

Ali Farka Touré: The River [World Circuit, 1990]
As a self-taught guitarist who's rarely reviewed without reference to John Lee Hooker, Toure is conflicted about Afro-American music--does he owe it or does it owe him? And although he always displays the guitar style that occasions the comparison (which I'm betting is part influence, part tradition, and part invention), his recordings drift into the folkloric. So it's a relief that unlike Mango's Ali Farka Toure or Shanachie's African Blues, this one means to cross over a bit. Not only does it make room for a second human being (Amadou Cisse on calabash, the percussion device that Toure overdubs on his Mango release), but tracks colored with harmonica, saxophone, fiddle and bodhran, and the single-stringed njarka that Toure picks up for the finale--not to mention an extra edge of vocal command. I don't know what Malians will think. But I say the result is variety, not compromise. And I say it's what he's always needed. A−