Music is an ancestral, dynastic phenomenon in West Africa, and guitarist Vieux Farka Toure was blessed to have as his father one Ali Farka Toure, a guitarist-singer who demonstrated that blues roots plumb as deeply alongside Mali’s Niger River as they do in the Mississippi Delta. Western reviewers almost invariably compared Ali Farka Toure’s music to that of John Lee Hooker — it was spare, penetrating and utterly essential.

But Ali Farka Toure frequently abandoned what he regarded as the sordid, shallow nature of show business for years at a time to tend to his rice farm, and when his second son, Vieux, expressed a desire to play music, the father forbade it. Slowly, surely, Vieux overcame the resistance. He began by playing drums before shifting to the instrument for which his father was renowned. Even then, his career required the sponsorship of a musician regarded as Ali Farka Toure’s equal — the preeminent kora player, Toumani Diabate. It was Diabate who invited Vieux on to his records, and who convinced Ali Farka Toure to relent. So it was that Vieux participated on Ali Farka Toure's crowning achievement, the majestic but still gutbucket blues disc "Savane," in 2006. A few months later, Ali Farka Toure performed on Vieux’s debut disc, the father’s final recording before succumbing to bone cancer at the age of 67.

Aside from a remix album, that was the extent of Vieux's output until last month’s release of "Fondo," a shimmering declaration of independence. Its opening track, "Fafa," encourages comparison not to Hooker or his father, but the capacious blues-rock tonality of Stevie Ray Vaughan or the Fabulous Thunderbirds. The record is hardly a retreat from Vieux’s African lineage: There is talking drum, ngoni, and chanted choruses galore. But the slashing guitar riffs — think scalded Jerry Garcia — above that talking drum on "Ai Haira" likewise serve notice that Vieux is a 21st century Malian, who doesn’t feel any dissonance between his pristine, spellbinding duet with Diabate’s kora on "Paradise," and the hellhound on his trail during "Fafa" or "Sarama."

In that sense, the Cedar is an ideal venue for the current Vieux Farka Toure tour. Here is Vieux’s MySpace page, which includes renditions of both "Fafa" and "Paradise," among others. Here is Vieux spitting out gorgeous blues licks that would make his father proud, on "Bamako Jam." And here he is covering U2’s "Bullet the Blue Sky."

Vieux Farka Toure at the Cedar Cultural Center, Thursday, June 25, 7:30 p.m., $18 in advance, $20 day of show.