Mali is a vast, landlocked African country, with the Sahara desert in its north, that’s been criss-crossed for thousands of years by nomads. Though guitarist Vieux Farka Touré comes from the settled Malian community of Niafunke—where his father, the late desert-blues legend Ali Farka Touré, lived and farmed—he seems to have picked up the yen to stay on the move. In recent weeks he’s played in Germany, France, Switzerland, and India, and is currently on his second tour this year of North America.

“I travel constantly with my regular musicians Tim Keiper [drums] and Shahzad Ismaily [bass],” says the globe-trotting Touré, reached in New York and speaking in French with a heavy Malian accent. “But when this tour’s done I’m going home to Niafunke to rest a bit, then there are more concerts in Mali and also in Dakar [Senegal]. It never stops.”

Touré, named Vieux after his grandfather, is one of the most sought-after guitarists in Africa, but he only picked up the instrument at the age of 23, in 2004. Before that, he played percussion and was principal drummer in the Orchestra of Niafunke. He learned the guitar in secret, as his famous father initially disapproved of him becoming a musician like himself.

Touré junior has made up for any lost time, however—releasing six solo albums of electric and acoustic guitar in the past eight years, performing to an estimated billion TV viewers at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, and collaborating with several leading musicians from other lands, most prominently Israeli world music and jazz pianist Idan Raichel.

For his latest release, Touristes, Touré has teamed up with rising U.S. singer and songwriter Julia Easterlin, who layers her music using a looping machine. “My manager came up with the idea of working with her. She should be touring with me but unfortunately she’s had to leave for family reasons. It’s the first time I’ve collaborated with a woman musician. She’s got a magnificent voice, and the album came together really naturally. Most of the compositions are mine, but she also brought her own music and ideas. We’re very happy with the result. I love the process of collaborating and discovering new things that you could never come up with on your own.”

Touré mixes a love of ancient traditions with the urge to experiment, making use of the latest music technology. His songs are characterized by deep grooves and the strong Tuareg, Berber, and Arabic influences from the north that colour much of the music of central Mali, to which he adds jangling cascades of notes and rock-inspired solos that sting and soar. “I refer a great deal to traditional music and call-and-response songs. That’s my great base for developing other, more contemporary things. I listen to a lot of rock and rap and like to draw on the differences between modernization in music and tradition, to see what that leads to creatively—and to take African music all over the world.”

Vieux Farka Touré performs at the Rickshaw Theatre on Tuesday (October 6).