Tinariwen (Mali)

The members of Tinariwen belong to the Touareg, the romantic indigo-clad North African nomads of the Sahara desert whose men veil. They were fighters in the Touareg insurgency against the Malian government, which lasted from the 60's to the mid-90's. In the military camps they were exposed to Bob Dylan and Bob Marley, and picked up electric guitars to create a rebel music based on adaptations of traditional songs.

The first CD “The Radio Tisdas Sessions” was recorded in a studio in Kidal, with the production of British guitarist Justin Adams and French world music group Lo'Jo. Because electricity is rationed in Kidal, the tracks had to be recorded between 7 PM and midnight, over a period of two weeks in 2001.

Fielding three guitarists, a bassist, a percussionist and two women singers, Tinariwen take to the stage with little ado, and ease themselves into an opening rhythm as fluid and clear as water. "Dropping a bucket into a deep well" is how rock singer Robert Plant described Tinariwen's music when he first heard them at the Festival of the Desert in Essakane.

The guitarists create a hypnotic sequence of interlocking riffs, minimalist explosions of notes from another world, cushioned by the call and response of the vocalists. There are phantom blues lines and echoes of James Brown-style funk in the music's rhythmic pulse, yet the sound evokes a sense of time and space independent of any outside influence.

What the group play is desert blues, the wandering, smoky lines of the music summoning up a nomadic sense of a land without boundaries. The figures of the guitarists are immobile, and so inscrutable are their veiled faces that almost the only stage movement is their hands flickering across the fret boards. It's an ambience that highlights the extraordinary dreamlike quality of the music.

The songs are mostly slow, stately, intense, dominated by distinctively gentle rocking rhythms (which emulate the gait of a camel in all its moods), call and response vocals, gnarled but simple guitar lines, ululations and handclaps. The overall effect is simply mesmerizing.

"…like the Sahara 's answer to the Grateful Dead"
Sean Barlow

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