Abdoulaye and I met and talked 7/6/2009 about at African night at St Nick’s in Harlem. About his Songhay roots. When we met at St Nick’s Pub in 2004 he went only by Adboulaye Alhassane. But his uncle is Ali Farka Toure (see video). The surname Toure is not on his passport. He just started using it again in U.S. We talked abt Bambara music in Gao, Mali and Niamey, Niger. Abt his father’s disapproval of his becoming a popular musician. Their lineage is traced back thru Morocco to Muhammad. In Niger, Abdoulaye said, state radio played Afro-American music especially James Brown. He watched every African American film shown when he was 10. Jim Kelley was his favorite. Africans marveled at African Americans in film & radio. He said “because they came from us!” (Africans).
And we talked about Coumba Sidibé. About Senegalese music being diatonic not pentatonic. This didn’t work for Coumba’s Wasulu singing in Bambara. How he wanted me to school her in jazz. We also talked abt my idea of “false cognates” or “false friends” when Jamaican wining meets the pelvic cadences in African dance-drum. And finally we talked about bringing our peoples together; completing the pain and suffering from our segregation.
