Tinariwen
The Radio Tisdas Sessions
(World Village)

Tinariwen's ten members, each of whom goes by one name such as Ibrahim, Kheddou or Hassan, are from a nomadic sub-Saharan tribe known as Kel Tamashek. The tribe's history in the 20th century is that of many disenfranchised people of Africa, with rising and falling colonial borders wreaking havoc on their traditional way of life. As recently as the early '90s, they were engaged in vicious fighting with the Malian government and its proxy armies. During one early-'80s exile in Libya, as the story goes, some of Tinariwen's members heard music by Dylan, Lennon and Marley, and were swayed as much by the sound of electric guitars as by the songs' messages of freedom.

As peace arrived in the mid-'90s, the musicians traded their weapons for guitars, a plot line that could've been conceived in Hollywood. From there, it might be easy to extrapolate that Tinariwen's music would become a muddy collision of their roots and outside influence, like so many other traditional musics that were cleaned up or watered down before being offered to Western ears. Instead, their sound is hauntingly pure and simple, at turns plaintive and hopeful, and impossible to forget.

The Kel Tamashek didn't hear rock music and imitate it--they honed in on its blues roots and recognized them as universally relevant. And despite the Arabic modes that course through Tinariwen's melodies and percussion, Radio Tisdas Sessions resembles the blues more than anything else. The softly picked leads snake through reverberating rhythm guitars, elegantly tracing the lead vocal's intonation. Each dusty note seems to carry the weight of years of suffering, but with a resolve that approaches joy.

The album is slightly flawed, though. The otherwise informative booklet offers no translation of the lyrics, and without it to glean specific meanings, the rhythms and guitars blur near the end. But the last song, a live recording called "Tin-Essako," recovers the mood, starting with a rousing exhortation from Kheddou that needs no translation; like the Kel Tamashek's music, he's simply gripped by the passion of living.

Mike Wolf