I had some apprehension when I saw that Vieux Farka Toure had gone the guest star route with his new album The Secret. Outside of hip-hop, guest star records tend to work best for older artists past their creative peak. Vieux Farka Toure’s still young and his music couldn’t be more vital. The list of guests look like the Malian star is going for a jam band crowd. Derek Trucks, Dave Matthews, John Scofield, and Ivan Neville show up, as does Soulive guitarist Eric Krasno who also produced the album. Thankfully, at least most of the time, Farka Toure is still mining the trance-inducing Malian grooves with the blues at the core that were perfected by his father Ali Farka Toure. The guest stars should help sell some records to people who might not ordinarily buy African music, but mostly they only serve to distract. Farka Toure’s music is intense and best served without the other stars.

Of the guests, Derek Trucks fares the best. Though still a young man, Derek Trucks has a world of experience and manages to adapt his slide guitar playing to a wide variety of styles. On Aigna, he fits in well adding some cool atmospheric sounds. When Dave Matthews shows up on All the Same, a great Malian groove turns into yet another Dave Matthews song. It’s sure to appeal to his fans, but takes away from the hypnotic experience Farka Toure and his band create.

Krasno and Neville show up on Lakkal (Watch Out), the album’s only true excursion into jam band territory. It’s a nice groove led by Neville’s organ and it does show off Farka Toure’s versatility, but it’s not the best use of his talents. Gido featuring groove jazz guitarist John Scofield is in more typical Farka Toure-style.  Farka Toure and John Scofield sound like they’re having fun trading licks. The song has more of an Arab/North African sound (common in Mali). But it still comes off as somehow shallower than Farka Toure’s best.

There’s one more guest star of a different nature. The album’s centerpiece is a nearly seven-minute long instrumental that features the late Ali Farka Toure. It’s mind blowing. It not only brings the spirit of the droning deep blues of John Lee Hooker and Junior Kimbrough, it recalls the feeling evoked by wild guitar jams like Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain. Flute and guitars interweave to lay down layers of melody driven by the percussion. It’s music you can lose yourself in. Now that Ali has passed, it can be seen as a passing of the baton from father to son.

Seven of the twelve tracks are just Vieux Farka Toure and his band featuring guitars, hand drums  and shaker percussion. The album opens with Soksondo. Ali is Vieux’s tribute to his father and the ancestors that came before them in their hometown on Niafunke. Borei is an uptempo rocker where Vieux shows off his guitar virtuosity. The album ends with Touri, a slow number with Farka Toure and back-up vocalists trading lines soulfully. When Farka Toure finally takes a guitar solo it’s restrained and fits perfectly within the mellow groove.

The album ends up being about two things: paying tribute to the greatness of Ali Farka Toure and the simultaneous emerging of his son as both keeper of the flame of the Malian groove and guitar hero to a new generation. Even with the guest stars, Farka Toure is making music on his own terms that’s totally within the tradition of his native Mali. It’s highly recommended for fans of trance-inducing  soulful music.