Bedridden and in the final stages of bone cancer, the great Malian guitarist Ali Farka Toure made one last recording in 2005 - a collaboration with his son Vieux that required people to carry the elder Toure into the studio.

Ali Farka Toure performs on two tracks of Vieux's first album, which showcases so many musical similarities between father and son that it seemed Ali had been grooming his offspring since the time Vieux was born. The opposite is true: Ali tried to discourage his son from becoming a professional musician, even sending him to the Malian army for military training. Only in his last few years did Ali accept and encourage his son's guitar playing.

"He always used to tell me how difficult a road it was - I'm convinced that was the reason he didn't want me to become a musician," says Vieux Farka Toure, who performs Nov. 4 in San Francisco as part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival. "He had so many problems himself. He always used to point out, 'See? Look how hard it is.' "

Early in Ali's career, some of those hardships included not being paid for concerts. Ali, who died in March 2006 at age 66, also cautioned Vieux about expecting too much too soon, saying he earned little money starting out decades ago.

Vieux has defied the odds by releasing an eponymous album that has galvanized critics ("The great dynasty lives on," proclaimed London's Guardian), sold well and led to six straight months of touring around the world.

Still, history is full of young musicians (Julian Lennon and Joachim Cooder, for example) who've had mixed success in following their famous parents into music, and Ali Farka Toure set a high standard for anyone to emulate: He won two Grammys (one with Ry Cooder for "Talking Timbuktu") and with his engaging personality, hypnotic guitar playing and principled songwriting established himself as one of world music's best musicians. In its 2002 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time," Rolling Stone magazine put Ali Farka Toure at No. 76, ahead of Neil Young, Joan Jett, the Doors' Robby Krieger and Pink Floyd's David Gilmour.

In the West, Ali Farka Toure stood out because his music reminded many people of American blues music. Filmmaker Martin Scorsese, who profiled Toure for PBS' 2003 series on the blues, went so far as to say that Toure was "the DNA of the blues."

On Vieux Farka Toure's album, which was released in February, blues-like riffs and traditional Malian songs are prominent, but Vieux, 26, has done something his father never would have: He mixed in reggae on one track and rock 'n' roll on another.

"The important thing is to always have one foot firmly in tradition, and then you can work firmly without that," Vieux Farka Toure says by phone from South Africa, where he performed before flying to the United States for a series of concerts. "The fact is, I listen on my iPod to a little bit of everything, so I carry that into my music. No one has given me hassles about it. It would be a very serious thing if I were to leave tradition behind and be a total iconoclast."

Vieux is the only one of Ali's 13 children to become a professional musician. During his teenage years, Vieux would perform on the calabash drum with the main orchestra of the Malian village of Niafunke. Trying to discourage him, Ali had Vieux spend a year in the army.

"I discovered I hated it," Vieux Farka Toure says, speaking in French translated into English by an interpreter. "I came back to my father and said, 'I can't do this. I want to register at the National Arts Institute.' And my father actually went with me to register - he was proud that I was taking the official musical route."

That was 2001, and Vieux switched from the calabash to the guitar. Ali would advise Vieux about playing, but it was Ali's nonmusical lessons that stay most with Vieux.

"My father over the years taught me so much - mostly about the philosophy of life: how to treat people, how to be with people, how to observe life, how to live life," Vieux says. "Ali was a man of many proverbs, and he frequently quoted proverbs in our daily conversations. The proverb he used to quote to me most often was, 'When the wind comes up, everybody grabs their own hat.' It means that everyone sees their own interests - what's literally right on top of their own head. He said it's something very human to do that, but you should also try to see beyond your own hat."

Like his father, who used his monetary success to pay for public-service projects in Niafunke, Vieux Farka Toure is funneling profits from his new album to pay for mosquito nets in the village, where malaria is the leading cause of death among children.

And, like his father, who always returned to Mali despite offers of a more lucrative life in Paris or other foreign cities, Vieux Farka Toure plans to stay in his country, which is one of the world's poorest.

In concert, Vieux Farka Toure pays homage to his father by playing several of Ali's best-known songs, including "Ai Du." Vieux dedicated his first release to his dad. On it, he performs with Toumani Diabate, the acclaimed kora (harp) player who also performed with his father.

Despite these links to his father, Vieux cautions people against seeing him as Ali's replica. As one example, he plays his father's songs somewhat differently from the original versions. Vieux's voice is also not as deep as his father's.

"It's complicated," Vieux says. "People think it's necessary to compare things that that are not always comparable. Ali was Ali. And I'm Vieux. Yes, I inherited a gift, luckily. But what I do is what I do. ... I always perform (Ali's songs) because it's my way of paying tribute to my father and at the same time, when I play his songs in my show, I feel much more calm, much more at peace with myself onstage."

By: Jonathon Curiel