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Ali Farka Touré: Touré is a multi-instrumentalist but is mainly known for playing the guitar. Ali Farka Touré died in 2006 (from bone cancer) but has released a number of acclaimed albums (including Talking Timbuktu, 1994, as a collaboration with Ry Cooder), and he became known as Africa's blues man or John Lee Hooker of Africa, anyway, a man of the blues. In a collaboration work with Toumani Diabaté, the two made a world-wide appraised album In the Heart of the Moon (2005) with Malian mandé folk music. Interesting music from Mali seems like an endless pot. I'm not saying it's the only interesting country in Africa but it's really amazing how much music has come from Mali, and these two are the exquisite artists of Malian mandé music.
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