Afel Bocoum

The great Ali Farka Touré was described as the ‘child of the river’, but this description also applies to Afel Bocoum, Ali’s protégé who also grew up in the town of Niafunké on the banks of the Niger. He’s gone from being an accompanist on Ali’s records, notably Niafunké (1999), to a solo artist in his own right. 2020’s Lindé shows him to be in the top league of West African artists, which is certainly saying something.

Afel Bocoum was born in Niafunké, the home town of Ali Farka Touré, in 1955 to a Songhai father and Fulani mother. Although not a hereditary musician, his father Abakina Ousmane Bocoum, aka Kodda, was the best-known njarka (one string fiddle) and njerkle (one string guitar) player in the region. “These are the two most typical instruments of the Songhai,” Afel says. “They’re powerful instruments, you must be well prepared spiritually to play them, otherwise they can be dangerous, because they have connections with the spirit world.”

Afel often accompanied his father at all-night wedding parties, until in 1968, he was introduced to the more inter-ethnic sounds of Niafunke’s official music group. “There was Ali Farka Touré, who was already a star in Mali by then, and a singer called Harber Maiga. Their talent was a gift from the heavens. I was only 13, but I spent all my time with them, day and night. I would do anything they wanted.”

His big breakthrough came in 1972 when he won second prize at the Biennale, the national competition which ran every two years from 1970 to 1990. He was accompanied by two great guitarists, Ali Farka Touré and Modibo Kouyaté. “Everybody liked it,” Afel recalls, “but I couldn’t have won first prize because I was Songhai, not Bambara (Mali’s main ethnic group). That’s the way it was in those days in Mali.”

Afel recorded his debut album in Niafunké when Nick Gold and Jerry Boys came to record Ali Farka Touré’s Niafunké. Alkibar (1999), also the name of Afel’s group meaning ‘Messenger of the Great River’, features Afel on vocals and lead guitar, Ali Farka Touré on two tracks and local musicians on njarka, njerkle, calabash percussion and backing vocals. Just as Ali did, Afel sings mainly in the languages of northern Mali: Songhai, Fulani and Tamashek. “Here in Mali, music is our newspaper,” he said to Songlines magazine in 2020. “People here love listening to music. So as an artist you must put good and useful messages in your songs. If there is no message the music is useless.”

Now getting known internationally, Afel collaborated with Damon Albarn on Honest Jon’s Mali Music (2002), became a regular contributor to Africa Express and went on to collaborate with Béla Fleck, Habib Koité, Tartit Ensemble, Oliver Mutukudzi and others. With Alkibar, he also released two traditional albums for the Belgian label Contre Jour, Niger (2006) and Tabital Pulaaku (2009). The latter includes a tribute to Ali Farka Touré who’d passed away in 2006.

Afel’s long-awaited new World Circuit album appeared in 2020. Lindé is named after a wild expanse near Niafunké where Afel and his childhood friends played and hunted animals. There is certainly nostalgia here as Afel’s been living in the capital Bamako since 2012 because of the jihadist threat. Executive produced by Nick Gold and Damon Albarn, it balances deep tradition with audacious innovation including the drums of Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen, the trombone of Vin Gordon (Bob Marley / Skatalites), and the violin of Joan As Police Woman. It’s a mixture that is perhaps encapsulated in the song ‘Avion’, referring to the airplane as a pirogue canoe that flies.

Although rooted in northern Mali’s ‘Desert Blues’, the album brings in many regional styles from across Mali, a celebration of the country’s diversity and its once famed sense of unity and tolerance – something which Afel realises Mali needs more than ever right now.