Vieux Farka Touré

Often referred to as “The Hendrix of the Sahara”, Vieux Farka Touré was born in Niafunké, Mali in 1981. He is the son of legendary Malian guitar player Ali Farka Touré, who died in 2006. Ali Farka Touré came from a historical tribe of soldiers, and defied his parents in becoming a musician. When Vieux was in his teens, he declared that he also wanted to be a musician. His father disapproved due to the pressures he had experienced being a musician. Rather, he wanted Vieux to become a soldier. But with help from family friend the kora maestro Toumani Diabaté, Vieux eventually convinced his father to give him his blessing to become a musician shortly before Ali passed.

Vieux was initially a drummer / calabash player at Mali’s Institut National des Arts, but secretly began playing guitar in 2001. Ali Farka Touré was weakened with cancer when Vieux announced that he was going to record an album. Ali recorded a couple of tracks with him, and these recordings, which can be heard on Vieux’s debut CD, were amongst his final ones. It has been said that the senior Touré played rough mixes of these songs when people visited him in his final days, at peace with, and proud of, his son’s talent as a musician.

In 2005, Eric Herman (still Vieux’s manager today) of Modiba Productions expressed an interest in producing an album for Vieux; this led to Vieux’s self-titled debut album, released by World Village in 2007. Ali Farka Touré’s work to tackle the problem of malaria is continued as 10% of proceeds are donated to Modiba’s “Fight Malaria” campaign in Niafunké through which over 3000 mosquito nets have been delivered to children and pregnant women in the Timbuktu region of Mali. On this first album, Vieux pays homage to his father and follows Ali’s musical tradition, giving new versions of the West African music that is echoed in the American blues. The album features Toumani Diabaté, as well as his late father.

On his second record, Fondo on Six Degrees (2009), Vieux branched out and presented his own sound: while remaining true to the roots of his father’s music he uses elements of rock, Latin music, and other African influences. The album received a great deal of critical acclaim from across the globe, and Vieux was clearly moving out of his father’s shadow.

By June 2010, Vieux was performing at the opening concert for the FIFA World Cup in South Africa. That month Vieux also released his first live album, LIVE. His live performances are highly energized and Vieux is known for dazzling crowds with his speed and dexterity on the guitar, as well as his palpable charisma and luminous smile, both of which captivate audiences from all audiences in spite of any language barriers (though Vieux does speak 8 languages).

In 2011 Vieux released his 3rd studio album, The Secret, so named because the listener will hear the secret of the blues with a blend of generations from father to son. It was produced by guitarist Eric Krasno (of the Soulive trio) and features South African-born vocalist Dave Matthews, Derek Trucks on electric slide guitar and jazz guitarist John Scofield. The title track is the last collaboration between Vieux and his late father. With the heralded release of The Secret, Vieux Farka Touré has clearly established himself as one of the world’s rare musical talents and guitar virtuosos with a distinct style that always pays homage to the past while looking towards the future.

Vieux released The Tel Aviv Session (Cumbancha) in April 2012, a collaborative project with Israeli superstar Idan Raichel dubbed ‘The Touré-Raichel Collective’ that has been hailed by fans and critics alike as a masterpiece and one of the best collaborative albums in the history of international music, drawing comparisons to Ali Farka Touré and Ry Cooder’s legendary Talking Timbuktu album.

In 2013, Vieux Farka Touré’s beautiful and critically acclaimed album Mon Pays was released as an homage to his homeland. Being that his native Mali had recently been splintered by territorial fighting between Tuareg and Islamic rebels since January 2012, Mon Pays was devoted to reminding the world about the beauty and culture of his native Mali. Translated as ‘My Country,’ this predominantly acoustic undertaking transformed into an artifact of cultural preservation. Two songs on the project – ‘Future’ and ‘Peace’ feature Sidiki Diabate’s kora leading an emotional charge complemented by Touré’s spectacular guitar work. Both tracks represent an important generational “passing of the torch” as Sidiki’s father, Toumani is considered one of the greatest living kora masters and was a close friend of Vieux’s father Ali. Mon Pays has been widely hailed as the most mature and lovely record yet from one of this generation’s most exciting artists to come out of Mali and one of world music’s true rising stars.

Vieux reunited with Idan Raichel in Paris to record, release and subsequently tour their 2nd collaborative album as The Touré-Raichel Collective in 2014. The result was yet another musical and critical triumph, titled ‘The Paris Session’ (Cumbancha) revered by many as not just a musical gem for the ages, but a powerful testimonial to the power of art and fraternity to transcend vast cultural and political divides. In 2015, Vieux released another unexpected, genre-bending collaborative album, this time with New York-based singer Julia Easterlin, aptly titled ‘Touristes’. The album shot to the top of the iTunes World chart and earned critical acclaim, including that of John Schaefer (NPR) who called it “brilliant.” On April 7, 2017, Vieux released his next album ‘Samba’, recorded live in front of a small audience at Applehead Studio in Woodstock, NY.

When the COVID pandemic hit in 2020 and all touring ground to a halt, Vieux stayed focussed on his craft at home. He worked tirelessly in the studio he built at his family’s compound (which he named ‘Studio Ali Farka Toure’ in honor of his late father) to record his debut album for World Circuit Records/BMG, the prestigious UK-based record label with whom his father recorded and released most of his own work. The resulting album, ‘Les Racines’ (released June 2022), sees Vieux masterfully return to the deep roots of the Desert Blues music that his father introduced to the world and Vieux spent most of his career to date exploring, experimenting with, and expanding. 2022 also saw the release of a long-awaited collaborative album between Vieux and Houston-based psych-rock superstars Khruangbin called ‘Ali’ – an album on which the artists join forces to pay homage to Ali Farka Toure by reimagining eight of his songs together.  The album was an instant hit around the globe, immediately getting millions of streams, enormous critical acclaim and even earning the praise of Sir Elton John who called it “one of the albums of the year – absolutely wonderful music.” With each new project Vieux broadens his horizons, embraces new challenges and further entrenches his reputation as one of the world’s most talented and innovative musicians.

As a passionate champion for the people of Mali and The Sahel, Vieux founded the charity Amahrec Sahel in 2012. As part of Amahrec Sahel’s mission to support humanitarian reconstruction and culture, the charity has provided school supplies for children, supported an orphanage in Bamako and provided musical instruments for young musicians in Mali. Vieux is also the director of The Ali Farka Touré Foundation, an international organization dedicated to the preservation of Ali’s legacy and the cultural growth of Mali.

Gitkin

Gitkin’s music has always lived between places. His sound is shaped by the kind of musical cross-pollination that happens in cities where cultures overlap and boundaries blur, absorbing a spectrum that doesn’t sit neatly in one tradition: dub echo chambers, surf guitar tones, deep funk pockets, and modal melodies hinting at places far from any single origin. Instrumental music, for him, has never been about genre. It’s about feel, atmosphere, and the quiet emotional narratives that unfold without words.

New Orleans-based Gitkin, also known as Brian J Gitkin, is a Grammy-nominated artist and producer renowned for his work with Cedric Burnside, Bab L’ Bluz, Bernard Purdie, Cyril Neville, and Art Neville, and as the mastermind behind the internationally beloved funk ensemble Pimps Of Joytime. What began as a passion project has grown into a global phenomenon, with monthly streams surpassing 300,000 and his self-produced albums resonating deeply across continents.

In 2022, fueled by mounting streaming momentum and international demand, he assembled a live touring trio featuring Palestinian multi-instrumentalist Simon Moushabeck (keys, accordion, percussion) and Cuban-American drummer Washington Duke. Together, the three create a spacious yet explosive live dynamic, weaving hypnotic grooves, desert-tinged melodies, and deep rhythmic interplay into something both transportive and visceral. Since forming, the trio has toured extensively across the United States, Germany, the U.K., the Netherlands, France, and Austria, selling out multiple headline shows and supporting acts such as Steel Pulse, Say She She, The Altons, and Thee Sinseers.

After years of crafting vocal-driven productions, Gitkin embraced the freedom of letting the guitar speak. “With Gitkin, I bring my love for African, Middle Eastern, and South American music into dialogue with American blues and funk,” he explains. “Performing as a trio leaves space for what I call ‘expensive moments,’ those times when something intangible takes over the room and everyone feels it.”
The story of Where the South Winds Wail begins less with a riff than with a feeling. Living in New Orleans, Gitkin found himself hearing fragments that felt unfinished, melodies drifting in and out before he could fully grasp them. Rather than force them into shape, he followed their atmosphere. Surf twang draped in shadows, blues exotica wandering into humid night, psychedelic cumbia tangled with echoes like an Afro-Amazon juke joint, the record moves like a transmission pulled from somewhere just out of reach.

New Orleans has hovered at the edge of Gitkin’s life for decades. Conceived there and returning since childhood, he carries its spirit with him in a way that feels personal rather than declarative. When the time came to make the album, he settled into his New Orleans studio and recorded much of it alone, handling the majority of the instrumentation himself. The city’s presence shows up less as reference and more as atmosphere, a weight in the air that shapes how the music breathes.

The lead singles “Alter Ego” and “Rain Over Royal” have already found their way onto KCRW, KEXP, BBC 6 Music, FIP, Worldwide FM, and NTS, earning spins across the US, Europe, and Australia.

Where the South Winds Wail, released in collaboration with Brooklyn-based Wonderwheel Recordings, arrives May 23, 2026, alongside a slate of U.S. and EU tour dates. It does not try to define where it belongs. It simply follows the pull of sound and spirit wherever they lead.