Red & Green

Originally released on vinyl in 1984 and 1988, these albums have been digitally remastered from the original master tapes and are made available complete as a two CD set with full lyrics and sleeve notes. In the 1970s Ali worked as a sound engineer for national Radio Mali and broadcasts of his performances earned him a formidable local reputation. In 1975 on the advice of a friend he sent a number of recordings he made there together with some photographs to the Sonodisc record company in Paris. This soon resulted in one of the first ever commercial releases of Malian music - a 12" vinyl album titled Ali Toure 'Farka'. Between 1975 and 1988 a total of seven albums were released and material from the first five of these was compiled on the World Circuit release Radio Mali in 1996. All seven albums were titled only with variations on the artist's name and included no information other than a photograph and the song titles. Because of this, the last two albums released became known as the Red and Green albums due to the coloring of their original album sleeves.