AS a young man, Sidi Toure did not want to be a doctor or a teacher; he wanted to be a musician.Growing up in Gao, Mali, his decision to embrace the folk music of his native region did not sit well with his upper-class family.“I told them, ‘Not everybody wants to be a physician or an electronics technician or even a musician,” said Toure. Years after he went against his family’s wishes and became the leader of Gao’s Songhai Stars (he was also named Mali’s best singer), the songwriter and guitarist is garnering critical acclaim in North America thanks to two albums, 2011’s Sahel Folk and this year’s “Koïma”.Still, despite his singular style of Mali-inspired folk reaching more people than ever outside his home country, Toure still gets grief from his eldest brother, who is a teacher.“He calls me the family’s ‘griot’ [a name usually given to African oral storytellers], but I’m not a griot,” he said with a chuckle. “He’ll ask his students if they know me — and of course they do — and then he’ll call me by that name. He could just say I’m an artiste.”“Music is a form of magic,” Toure said. “Koïma is akin to voodoo music. There are many different names for voodoo in Africa. My mother, who is now dead, would play the violin on Thursday evenings for the Goddess of Water, which is something that is on the album [on a song named Woy Tiladio (Holley), or Beautiful Woman (Goddess of Water)]. The Goddess would keep watch on the city’s children and keep them from drowning.”Toure is now emerging as one of Mali’s vocal artistic figures after the military coup that set the country ablaze earlier this year.
