Walking on a late evening on my own I passed a theatre I knew nothing about. I looked up what shows they had coming up and saw that Vieux Farka Touré was playing that week. I confirmed that he was the artist who had released a collaborative album with Khruangbin and mulled over buying tickets before realizing it was sold out.

While working the next day I listened to his KEXP live studio performance. It sounded great. On the day of the show, I called the theatre a couple times and managed to snag a couple tickets. Z and I went, and it was amazing. His band was the same as in the KEXP live performance: a bassist, a percussionist, and Vieux Farka Touré on guitar and vocals. All the instruments sounded great, especially the percussion and the guitar, but best of all was Vieux Farka Touré’s voice. I’ve since returned to Ali, his album with Khruangbin, and confirmed that it doesn’t do his voice justice. Live it was spellbinding.