Talking Timbuktu

Credited to Ali Farka Toure with Ry Cooder, the album is Toure's music with Cooder as producer and guest guitarist. It was recorded and mixed at Ocean Way in Los Angeles in September 1993 and reported finished in about three days. The tracks are sung in Peul, Bambara, Songhai and Tamasheck, as the liner notes credit them. Larry Hirsch is credited as mixer on several tracks, and the vinyl edition was mastered at Bernie Grundman Mastering. In the US it came out on Hannibal.

Cooder's part varies from track to track. He plays electric slide guitar on Amandrai, electric guitar and mbira on Gomni, a tambora on Keito and mandolin with slide guitar on Ai Du, and he does not appear on Sega or Banga, which are Toure's njarka pieces with percussion. Tom Moon wrote in Trouser Press that Cooder pulls Toure in a more eastern, raga-styled direction, and called the result music that defies glib categorization. AllMusic and Music Week each gave it three stars out of five. Toure said that for some people Timbuktu sounds like the end of the world, but that he could say they were right at the heart of the world.

The record won the Grammy for Best World Music Album, was certified Gold by IMPALA in Europe in 2009 for 100,000 sales, and sold 238,000 copies in the United States by 2007. It is in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. The guitar riff of Diaraby was chosen for the Geo-quiz of the radio programme The World after a listener vote. A 1994 promotional CD single, Ai Du + 2, paired the title track with live versions of Diaraby and Keito from the KCRW-FM show Morning Becomes Eclectic.