by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

“May the earth be gentle to him.” That’s an old Mandingo blessing for the departed, one that Ivory Coast guitarist/percussionist Aboulaye Kone, a Quebec resident since 2000, offers up for the late Ali Farka Toure, for whom a memorial concert Kone and others are putting on this week. This past March 7, cancer took the 67-year-old guitarist at his home in Bamako, Mali, but not before he’d left a giant footprint on the landscape of global music.

Kone’s blessing carries a little irony with it, given Toure’s love for the land and its bounty. Despite achieving worldwide renown for his music, Toure saw little attraction in relocating to such world-music hubs as New York, Paris or Berlin. He preferred the simple life of his village Niafunke (of which he was the beneficent mayor for a time), farming, tending livestock and initiating an irrigation project in his area.

“He was a big cultivator, a big farmer, he stayed at home, stayed simple, attached to his roots and to his country, which is mine also,” says Malian transplant Madou Diarra, who drums and plays the stringed n’goni. Senegal’s Zal Sissokho—a griot (oral historian) by descent, kora player by trade and Quebec resident by choice—adds that, “By his example, he brought a message of hope to Africa which, through his work and good will, can raise itself up and enrich itself. Africa gave him a lot, and in return, he gave a lot to Africa.”

Toure gave to more than just Africans, though. Though as a youth he played the traditional Malian gurkel, he switched to the guitar in 1956. It was in the late ’60s that he discovered the American blues icon John Lee Hooker, and was electrified by the recognition of the style’s clear West African foundations. In striving to bring the blues back home, he brought Malian music to the world, particularly through his collaborations. Toure’s later work with Hooker was likely inevitable, but it was Talking Timbuktu, with Ry Cooder, that truly cemented the link he sought between the old world and the new.

The 1994 album remains a genuine masterpiece, a rich and vivid demonstration not only of the roots of the blues but of two exceptional talents building off each other’s inspiration. Its extended stay at number one on Billboard’s world-music chart came as little surprise, and it earned Toure his first of two Grammys. “Imagine it,” laughs Diarra, “a self-taught musician, who never went to school, who succeeded in grabbing two Grammy awards!”

Hommage à Ali Farka Toure, with Zal Sissokho, Aboulaye Kone, Madou Diarra, la Famille Zon and Tapa Diarra, at Club Balattou on Sunday, April 23, 8 p.m., $10

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