The River (Ali Farka Toure, Mango), Balendala Djibe...  March
24, 1991|By Jack Fuller.  The River (Ali Farka Toure, Mango),
Balendala Djibe (Sanougue Kouyate, Mango).  It is always a
dangerous piece of over-reaching to try to render judgment on
the product of unfamiliar genres from a vastly different
culture. But with African music there are links that make the
listening especially interesting, even if the judgment must
remain tentative. The Toure recording especially haunts you with
the suggestion of how such American forms as rhythm and blues
might have evolved in other circumstances. There are familiar
echoes and suggestions aplenty on this fascinating recording,
all set as distant as a morning call from a mosque. Sonougue
Kouyate`s music is more remote from our own, though it springs
from the same culture as Toure`s-the West African nation of
Mali. The songs and her rendering of them are hypnotic,
suggesting realms of experience only distantly related to our
own.