A son listens to his father, and the music flows

WORLD

Vieux Farka Touré

Where: Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette St., New York

When: Tomorrow, 7:30 and 9:30 p.m.

How much: $15. Call (212) 967-7555.

BY MARTY LIPP

FOR THE STAR-LEDGER

It's a dramatic story of Shakespearean proportions: The son of a living legend wants to follow in his father's footsteps, yet the father tries to stop him because he knows the road ahead will be heartbreaking.

But this bittersweet story of filial rebellion ends with a bright new beginning: the debut album of Vieux Farka Touré, son of the late, great Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré.

The younger Touré has not only started recording, but he's on his first concert tour of the U.S., home of the blues -- a relative, in spirit at least, of the soulful Malian music the Tourés, father and son, both play. Tomorrow night he appears at Joe's Pub in Manhattan.

Vieux loved music as a child, but when he took up the guitar and began to embrace playing, the elder Touré tried to dissuade him from pursuing a musical career. Ali had found international success after his 1994 team-up with Ry Cooder, "Talking Timbuktu," but he had had a tough, long climb and wanted better for his son. Ali also knew that even successful musicians have a hard life, away from home for long stretches.

"He was concerned for Vieux's well-being," says Vieux's Canadian co-producer, Eric Herman. A bass player with a strong interest in African music, Herman met Vieux when they were attending the National Arts Institute in Mali, a West African country on the edge of the Sahara.

Herman recalls Vieux jamming one day at the school. He immediately heard Ali's sound, as well as the young Touré's raw talent, in the music.

With Herman translating, Vieux says, "I didn't have a choice -- this was what I needed to do."

Growing up in the city of Bamako and his family's home in Niafunké in the desert, Vieux took to teaching himself the guitar, learning to play in his father's distinctive bluesy style. He would sneak off to his cousin's house to play. When he decided to go to school to improve, his father made it hard for him to study by cutting him off financially, Vieux says. Going against his father's wishes was particularly hard since "elders are given the utmost respect in Malian culture," adds Herman.

Ali died of cancer last year, but not before he was reconciled to Vieux's career choice.

During the recording of Vieux's album, Ali agreed to play with his son and was literally carried into the studio. Several months later, he died in a Bamako hospital.

Vieux says he felt a potent mix of emotions as his father played on his album, while suffering terribly from the disease. The experience left him in "a sad state of pride," he says.

The younger Touré's debut recording has much of the character of his father's album, but it extends the journey that his father began. The album mixes electric guitar with African instruments, playing spare, hard-edged melodies over hypnotic rhythms. Vieux says many people forget that his father's style, translating African string instruments to the guitar, was considered revolutionary in its time.

Now, he says, he is taking his father's influence and adding his own experience. Vieux's album combines acoustic and electric instruments, African and Western. The characteristic Malian sound that smacks of a dry desert landscape is there, alongside what sounds like the blues to American listeners.

Ethnomusicologists are cautious about attributing a direct relationship to the two musical styles. But Vieux says the Malian blues of his father and American blues "are the same thing -- period."