Today’s edition of “Best of The Beat” provides a sidebar for our interview with Manny Anser, the director of the now-nomadic Festival in the Desert, which has been effectively homeless since 2013 due to the continuing insecurity in northern Mali. The Caravan of Peace tour made an appearance in New York in May at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, presented by the World Music Institute, with performances by the Ali Farka Toure Band, led by Afel Bocoum, and the Tuareg group Terakaft. Toure was closely associated with the festival, and so this first-time participation by his former band was a welcome continuation of his involvement.
Afropop had followed the late, great Malian guitarist (and father of the up-and-coming artist Vieux Farka Toure) for many years, encountering him in Mali in 1993, at the 2003 Festival in the Desert and in various locations in the States. Fittingly, when Toure passed away on March 7, 2006, Afropop’s Banning Eyre wrote a personal remembrance and tribute to him, which was reprinted in The Beat Vol. 25, #2.
READ OR DOWNLOAD PDF Beat25#2AFTobit
To dive deep into APWW’s wealth of information on this seminal guitarist, see the following features:
http://www.afropop.org/22096/l...
Afropop Worldwide programs "Africa and the Blues," and "Live in Niafunke"
http://www.afropop.org/6275/af...
http://www.afropop.org/5072/al...
BOTB Festival in the Desert 2003 article:
