Matthew McConaughey's Life in Songs Has Taken Him Everywhere

My Life in Songs

While sitting down to discuss the songs that have defined his life, the actor recalls a life-changing trip to Africa, the time he considered becoming a monk, picking up songs from his brother, and more

Matthew McConaughey once took an elaborate, multi-day trip to Niafunké in Mali on a hunt for Ali Farka Touré, the blues musician behind one of his all-time favorite songs, “Ai Du.” He didn’t exactly know where to find the artist. His journey to Africa only began because it came to him in a dream after he first heard the song.

“I got the liner notes, found out he was from Niafunké, on the Niger River, and knowing nothing else, I said, ‘Well, that’s where I’m going, and I won’t get a return ticket,'” McConaughey tells Rolling Stone while sitting down to discuss the songs that have defined his life. “I hitched a nine-hour ride to Mopti. Met somebody with a boat. We did a two-day trip up the Niger River to Niafunké, where I went to town, and we were looking for Ali. Hours and hours and hours. I’m finding Ali.”

To make a long story long, McConaughey finally finds Ali, but forgets the name of the song. “Sometimes you travel and you lose a sense of space and time and memory,” he says. “I forgot the damn name of the song. I love the song. I knew it was ‘Ai Du,’ and I’m sitting there not remembering the name of the song. Anyway, he gets up with a VHS and through translation, he goes, ‘I want you to listen to this song of me in concert. I stopped the rain this night.’ He put a VHS in. It was a concert he was playing in France, and it was this song.” He remembers it as “the most important trip I’ve taken in my life.”