Afel Bocoum

Afel Bocoum's concert on 23 April at Akropolis Palace must be rescheduled due to the rejection of repeated requests for travel visas. An alternative date is under negotiation. Tickets remain valid.

Ali Farka Touré's bandmate arrives with his version of desert blues.

Afel Bocoum is a singer, songwriter and guitarist from the town of Niafunké in northern Mali, an area known for its “desert blues”. Bocoum's music represents the most delicate, virtuosically sophisticated branch of this genre. From the age of 13, he was in Ali Farka Touré's band and is considered his most talented successor. Over the course of three decades, he contributed profusely to the music with which Touré won two Grammy Awards during his lifetime. In 2002, Bocoum collaborated with rock icon and African music connoisseur Damon Albarn, lead singer of Blur, and they performed together in London and Denmark.