"Ah, son, music is not good. The people are not good. They are not honest. I would prefer you do something better."

This was the advice the late, great Malian musician Ali Farka Toure gave to his son, Vieux, when he was a child.

But Vieux, now 26, had other ideas, telling his father: "Everyone has his life. Everyone does what he has to do.

"Finally, he understood."

Vieux was deeply inspired by his father's music, a blend of traditional Malian music and blues, which led to him being called the African John Lee Hooker.

He grew up secretly playing along to his father's records and remained determined to pursue his musical ambitions.

In his late teens Vieux defied his father's wishes and enrolled at the National Arts Institute in the Malian capital, Bamako.

Already an accomplished drummer and calabash player, Vieux started to learn the guitar, emulating his father's style and writing his own music.

"I have my own style and Ali's style, and it works that way," he says. "I try to balance the two. If everything goes well, this should make for a good road.

"It was never required that I learn Ali's style. No. I wanted to have my own style. But I felt obliged personally to know his style, because that's just how it was."

Vieux's talent was spotted by kora player Toumani Diabate, who invited him to join his band. They toured France and South Africa and Vieux even began to accompany his father on guitar.

In 2005, he hooked up with an old friend, Eric Herman, a North American musician and producer with whom he had played while he was a student at the Arts Institute.

Together they started to record an album. Just a short while before his death from bone cancer, Ali contributed to two tracks on the record - a final act of acceptance for his son's chosen career path.

Last week saw the release of a remix album, UFOs Over Bamako, featuring big-beat dancefloor fillers, funk, trance and dubby electronica reworked from Vieux's desert blues.

The result was something of a surprise to the musician.

"When I heard these remixes, I said to myself, 'What is that?'," says Vieux, "because I've never really heard music like that. I don't know about this. When I listened more, I said, 'It can't be true. It wasn't us who did this. It was some devil.'"

"But you know, we could say that everyone has his job. That's the way I prefer to look at it. That's the truth. They've put something new into it that's never been seen before.

"You see? And that impressed me."

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