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Global Hit: Tinariwen (syndicated through Public Radio International)
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The World, Global Hit: Tinariwen (syndicated through Public Radio International) >>
Every musical group has a story about its founding. There's the story of how John met Paul at a church fair in Liverpool. The Grateful Dead came out of Ken Kesey's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests. Then, there's the group from the west African nation of Mali. The members of Tinariwen met each other in a guerrilla training camp.
The ten members of Tinariwen live near Bamako, Mali's crowded capital city. But the group's name translates as "empty places." That's a reference to the Sahara desert, home of their tribe, the Kel Tamishek. The gritty desert landscape permeates their culture. For example, the tribe has several dozen different words for camel.
For most of the twentieth century Kel Tamashek tribal fighters battled the French, and later the Malian national army, for control of their corner of the Sahara. Between skirmishes, many took refuge in neighboring Algeria and nearby Libya. That's where Tinariwen's founding members met nearly twenty years ago.
They say they got weapons training in Libya courtesy of Colonel Ghadaffi and something else, their first exposure to the music of Bob Dylan and Bob Marley. That inspired them to go beyond traditional Malian instruments and pick up electric guitars.
While in exile, Tinariwen began playing songs to promote Kel Tamashek independence. Their tapes, found circulating throughout the northern Malian desert, were banned by the Bamako government for years. It wasn't until the mid 1990s that political reforms made it safe for Tinariwen's musicians to return home to Mali. Now they perform there without restriction, and take their desert music on concert tours worldwide. The group says its latest album is less about Kel Tamishek independence and more about Malian reconciliation and hope.
Tinariwen's new record is the first to be available here in the States. The album title, "The Radio Tisdas Sessions," takes its name from the place where it was made, a local Tamashek radio station in the northern Malian desert. The CD liner notes contain no lyrics, but then, the rugged sound of Tinariwen doesn't really require translation.
For the World, I'm Stephen Snyder. 11/27/02 >> go there
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