Ali Farka Touré at the table

In Niafunké and throughout the Niger bend, a Malian meal is not divided into starter-main-dessert. It is built around a starch base—rice grown along the riverbanks, or tô (millet/sorghum paste)—topped with a shared sauce. Everyone eats from the same large dish, with the right hand, squatting or sitting on a mat. Green tea (ataya), served in three rounds after the meal, extends the conversation and music. Fermented dairy and millet porridge serve as snacks or breakfast.

Ali Farka Touré's cooking rests on two pillars: fish (Nile perch, tilapia) caught from the Niger, then smoked or dried to infuse all sauces with deep umami, and the millet/rice he grew himself. Gunpowder green tea, bitter at first then sweetened through the rounds, is the third signature—that of hospitality.