A Sad Day for Great Music

Sorry hollowdweller my puter is orally challenged . What kinda instrument and music did he play ? When people pass on I try to celebrate their life and then I don,t mourn their passing as much . I hope I am so well balanced when my own time comes .
 
That IS sad, HD. I love his music. Expecially the album he did with Ry Cooder.
 
Aardvark said:
That IS sad, HD. I love his music. Expecially the album he did with Ry Cooder.
Click to expand...

Playing it right now.

Here you go:

BAMAKO (Reuters) - Desert blues pioneer Ali Farka Toure, one of Africa's best-loved musicians, was posthumously awarded Mali's highest civil honor on Wednesday ahead of a funeral ceremony in his hometown on the edge of the Sahara.

The double Grammy-winning singer and guitarist, who died on Tuesday after a long fight with bone cancer, was made Commander of the National Order by Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure.

"Farka is a monument of Malian music, Farka is the pride of Mali ... We have decided in the name of the Malian people to name him Commander," Toumani Toure said.

Dubbed "the African John Lee Hooker," Farka Toure's haunting music, which he sang in 11 languages, combined the traditions of his native northern Mali with the influence of American blues, which he saw as having its roots in West Africa.

One of the continent's most internationally successful artists, he won acclaim around the world for his 1994 album "Talking Timbuktu," recorded with Texan guitarist Ry Cooder, and won a second Grammy last month for "In the Heart of the Moon," an album made with his countryman Toumani Diabate.

He had just finished work on a new solo album when he died.

Farka Toure, who was born in 1939 but like many Africans of his generation did not know his exact date of birth, was due to be buried later on Wednesday in his hometown of Niafunke, on the barren shores of the slow-moving Niger river near Timbuktu.

Though famous for his music, Farka Toure eschewed a life of glamour and thought of himself above all as a farmer, tending to a 350-hectare farm in Niafunke, where he was made mayor after setting up projects to help local women and children.

For the fellow musicians and fans who gathered at Bamako airport, from where his body was due to be flown, the landscape which inspired his music seemed to pay him a final homage as a desert wind blew clouds of sand across an orange sky.

"The whole of Mali woke up this morning to such strange weather and no visibility," Toumani Diabate, a virtuoso of the kora or traditional harp, said by telephone from the airport.

"Ali was a man of God. Everyone is thinking the same thing. However you look at it, it's mystical."

(Additional reporting by Nick Tattersall in Dakar)
 
My ipod has about 6,000 songs on it, but pulled up one of his songs at "random" about 6 hours before the announcement that he'd died? :confused: :(
 
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