Listen to today's Global Hit

A few years ago, the subject of today's Global Hit was one half of a familial duo called Toure Toure. Daby Toure and his cousin Omar played hundreds of concerts. But Daby never felt fully satisfied. He felt the music industry and the media were never really interested in Toure Toure's music. Daby thought the attention he and his cousin received was only because they were Africans with an intriguing story.

Daby Toure ventured out as a solo artist. When Peter Gabriel heard Daby Toure sing impromptu earlier this year, he asked Toure to go on tour with him as a back-up singer. Gabriel also brought Daby Toure into his Realworld recording studios to make an album.

Daby Toure's grandfather came from a family of shoemakers in Mali, West Africa. When the crocodiles that provided the leather for the shoes began to die, the shoemakers were without work and scattered. One of the brothers, Daby moved east to Senegal. There he married four wives and had many children. This new generation of Toures was musically gifted. And one of them, Hamidou, had a son, who was named after his grandfather. Daby Toure, like his father Hamidou, had an innate attraction to music. At night Daby and his friends entertained the village, banging out rhythms on found objects: tin cans and boxes.

Daby Toure moved to Mauritania when he was a teenager. On the local radio station in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, he discovered western artists like the Police, Bob Marley and Dire Straits. Daby's father, Hamidou, was a skilled part-time musician. But he tried to steer his son away from a career in music. Fate wouldn't have it that way for Daby or his father. Hamidou Toure was asked by his younger brothers to join their band, the well-known Toure Kunda. And because political unrest was making life hard in Mauritania, Hamidou agreed. He sold his home in Nouakchott, and he took his son Daby with him. Daby Toure has been writing songs and performing them ever since.