Jamming with Ali Farka Touré

Kevin Macleod- bouzouki & Ali Farka Touré - njurkel, Washington DC, USA, 2003.

In 2003, The Occasionals were asked to participate in the prestigious Smithsonian Folklife Festival held on the National Mall in Washington DC, USA. Each year, The Smithsonian Institute highlights cultures from around the world, and that year Scotland, the Appalachian region of America and Mali were chosen.

The Occasionals at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, 2003, l-r Kevin Macleod, Ian Hardie, Gus Millar & Freeland Barbour.

I was very excited to go, and perform, and also experience the Malian culture on show for the 2 weeks.

I attended the first week of the festival, but nipped off to join my great friend, the legendary bouzouki maestro Alec Finn of De Danann, to perform at the 2003 Zoukfest in Taos, New Mexico.

Kevin Macleod - mandolin, & Alec Finn - bouzouki, Taos New Mexico, USA, 2003.

I had a keen interest in the wonderful, grooving, string based sounds of the magical exponenets of the kora, the West African harp. And I was also very excited to see that the genius Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré was to appear. However, that appearance was during the second week, so I feared that I would not see him perform.

Ali Farka Touré had made a particularly fine recording, entitled ‘Talking Timbuktu’, with one of my greatest musical heroes, legendary Californian guitarist Ry Cooder, and I actually took the cd cover along just in case I might see Ali in person. You just never know!

‘Talking Timbuktu’ by Ali Farka Touré & Ry Cooder

So, at the end of a fun week in Taos with Alec Finn (https://youtu.be/1suxqbPlncc), I flew back from Albuquerque to Washington DC on the last weekend of the 2003 Folklife Festival, and headed for the Georgetown Marriott Hotel, where we were all based. Ian Hardie, our fiddler had left earlier, but his room was still there, so I had a bed for the night at least!

As I went into the hotel, walking past an impromptu Bamako style street market in reception, where the Malians were selling all sorts of exotica to passing Americans, I became aware of a great throng of Malians and others further along one of the main corridors. And music coming from the epicentre of it all, where sat jamming non other than Ali Farka Touré himself, and a couple of American musicians. I was astonished, and dashed to the room to get my bouzouki, and cd cover, and somehow managed to blag my way into sit beside the maestro himself.

Kevin Macleod - bouzouki, & Ali Farka Touré - njarka, Washington DC, 2003.

Ali Farka Touré was playing his tiny, bowed njarka, and, possibly, a bit on a borrowed guitar. I busked along gamely, having a magical moment with this legendary figure of the African and world music scene. People were filming, though I’ve never seen any video, probably just as well, and a kind lady from Glasgow took some memorable photographs, and passed them on to me when I got home. I’m sure it all sounded bizarre to Ali, and the Malian crowd, but I thoroughly enjoyed every minute and remember it like yesterday!

I even managed to persuade him to try the bouzouki, and goodness knows if that had ever happened before!

Ali Farka Touré - with Kevin Macleod’s Greek bouzouki, Washington DC, 2003,

And, joy! Ali signed my cd cover too, with a wee drawing of his njarka! A great end to a wonderful trip!

‘Talking Timbuktu’, signed with a drawing of Ali Farka Touré’s njarka, 2003.

Karine Polwart, the exceptional Scots singer was on that trip. and later wrote a lovely wee recollection here -

Karine Polwart : From DC to Dundee, Greenock to New York 

“I’ve been here once before, in the steamy summer of 2003, at the invitation of the Smithsonian, for its annual Folklife Festival.  Back then I’m part of a Scottish delegation of around 200 traditional musicians, storytellers and artisan craftspeople. We’re in the company of 200 folks from Appalachia, and another 200 from Mali, who, it has to be said, are bearing the heat with rather more style and grace than the pasty-faced Scottish delegation. Several of us have already collapsed with exhaustion in close to 100 °C heat and 80 % humidity. 

I recall my two weeks there as a joyous, expansive, transformative time, peppered with unforgettable moments of international connection: the legendary Ali Farka Touré in an anodyne hotel corridor jamming with Kevin Macleod, mandolin player with Scottish dance band The Occasionals; a crew of Malian women, nomadic Tuareg singers, leaping up to join Ishbel McCaskill of Lewis on a Gaelic waulking song; finding my own rhythmic space on a parking lot roof, singing Scots dance songs amongst a dozen Appalachian old timers;  and squeezed into a lift beside the amazing Oumou Sangaré, perhaps the most regal human I’ve ever encountered.” - Karine Polwart

Sadly, Ali Farka Touré died three years later in 2006, but his musical legacy remains formidable, and is also carried on by his powerhouse guitarist son Vieux Farka Touré, also of Niafunke in Mali, who we were fortunate to see in Edinburgh in October 2025. And get my cd signed too!

Vieux Farka Touré in the Liquid Rooms, Edinburgh, October 2025