A man approached me in a bar before I did a show in New York and asked me if I played with Vieux Farka Touré, and when I told him I did, he leant forward and asked me: ‘Is he really, really old?’ ” As he is telling this story, a great smile breaks across Vieux’s face. Despite what his given name suggests, he is only 26.

“I’m not even the oldest in my family,” continues the son of the great Saharan blues guitarist Ali Farka Touré. “But in Mali, people call you by a nickname. I shared my name, Boureyma, with my grandfather, who was old, so I became...” He lets the story finish itself.

When his father died in 2006, there was a fear among fans that the desert blues would go with him. Ali was a colossus, a guitarist-farmer who defined the sound of the people who live on the great dunes that sweep down to the northern banks of the Niger river at Timbuktu. In his wake came the Tuareg group Tinariwen, but few people knew Ali had offspring determined to keep his spirit alive.

At the Festival in the Desert in Mali in January, artists queued up to pay tribute to Ali, but one young man’s performance grabbed their attention. However, owing to a mix up with the introductions, few in the crowd knew that it was Vieux. His identity became clear only when fans got a look at his face on the cover of his debut album, which was released a month later.

Here was a real Farka Touré, though one who had grown up in the Malian capital, Bamako, rather than the desert, and who was open to a wider range of influences. You can hear blues from Africa here, but also Mississippi Delta blues and Canned Heat-style boogie. Such is his openness, there is even an imminent remix version (Remixed: UFOs over Bamako) that arguably improves on some of the originals. Yet it wasn’t meant to be this way.

Vieux’s father believed that he had been ripped off by a French record company when he was starting out, and so steered his children in different directions. Vieux was to become a soldier, but rebelled and left home for Bamako. “I guess growing up and seeing the position my father had in society must have affected me, but I didn’t want to be a musician either. And then, when I was about 20, I realised I would have to start working, and I preferred the idea of being a musician to serving in the military.”

Six years ago, he enrolled in the Bamako conservatoire, where he studied guitar under the kora maestro Toumani Diabaté, an old friend of his father’s. But still music was anything but all-consuming. In fact, Vieux says, it was only when he decided to record an album that things got serious. “It was because of Toumani. He was a godfather: he put me in his band and taught me how to be a working, touring musician.”

If anybody ever wonders whether musical stars’ offspring have to work hard to make a name for themselves, a peek in Vieux’s diary should be answer enough. It was July when we met, and he was on his way from Niafunké in the Sahara to New York, but a stopover in Britain turned into a gig at the Frome Festival in Somerset. He had just finished a collaboration with his father’s old friend, Ry Cooder, recording the soundtrack to a new Julia Roberts film.

Two days later, he would be in North America for the start of a six-week tour. After Canada, there would be Ireland then South Africa. A fortnight’s rest then a European tour, then back to America for a Festival in the Desert Tour with Tinariwen until November 11. Four days later, he will be in Bristol for the start of a tour of Britain with the bossa nova outfit Zeep.

“I have no idea what the British tour will be like, but you shouldn’t plan these things too much,” he says. As if to prove this, our chat is interrupted by the arrival of Pee Wee Ellis, James Brown’s saxophonist in the late 1960s. The two have arranged a jam to see if they might collaborate that evening. Minutes after being introduced they are trading licks as if they have known each other for years. If the shows with Zeep come close to what Frome gets, they will be special indeed.

Vieux is clearly exhilarated afterwards. It must be like the moment his father gave his blessing to his musical career. “Things don’t happen like that in our society. You don’t have to ask for authorisation, it’s much more philosophical, it just comes. My dad was a cool guy, so by his acts and by his words it just became understood that what I wanted to do was OK.”

But surely the legacy of what his father did must weigh heavily? “Oh yes,” he says, then stares straight into my eyes. “But only because people keep asking me about it.” Truly, a Vieux head on young shoulders

By: Dave Hutcheon