Musical and linguistic polyglot Daby Touré’s elegant sonic creations are a puzzle whose assembled pieces form a comprehensive, culture-bridging world map. He comes by this naturally, from a musical family and early life in a small Senegalese village where he and friends entertained by banging out rhythms on old tins, canisters and cardboard boxes. Later, living in the city with his musician father Hamidou Touré (from the pioneering family Afropop band Touré Kunda) Daby taught himself guitar, despite his father not wanting him to develop any crazy ideas about becoming a musician. He also began discovering the exotic joys of western pop music, thanks to radio, pirated cassettes, and the occasional TV broadcast.

He soaked up Paris’ rich musical life as a late teen, with music slowly becoming his whole life as he teamed up with his cousin Omar to form the band Touré Touré, which explored the vivid common frontiers of jazz and African sounds. This led to him writing and arranging songs, controlling every aspect of the creative process in his home studio. Touré’s unique musical path and explorer’s spirit have created a virtuosic guitarist whose melodic hooks and universal lyrics offer musical solace in troubled times.

-Kerry Clarke