The River is a studio album by Malian singer and multi-instrumentalist Ali Farka Touré.

[1] The album was released by the UK-based World Circuit label and distributed internationally by Mango Records.

[2] Reviewing the album for The Village Voice, Robert Christgau gave it an A-minus and applauded its attempts to cross over in the form of "tracks colored with harmonica, saxophone, fiddle and bodhran, and the single-stringed njarka that Touré picks up for the finale--not to mention an extra edge of vocal command."

Overall, the album offered a "variety, not compromise", that Christgau believed Touré had needed on his earlier recordings, which "drifted into the folkloric".

[3] In an interview for Guy Oseary's On the Record (2004), music entrepreneur and record collector Craig Kallman named The River among his 15 favorite records.