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Desert Storm
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Penguin Eggs, Desert Storm >>
Tinariwen’s fans include former Led Zepplin tap dancer, Robert Plant. Nomads from the edge of the Sahara Desert, these former rebels put down guns for guitars. Chris Nickson reckons they’re on the verge of winning a prestigious BBC Radio 3 World Music Award.
If you want to talk about desert blues, it doesn’t come any sandier or rawer than Tinariwen. Members of the nomadic Tuareg people who’ve roamed back and forth across the geographical borders of the Western Sahara, they weave a raw, mesmerizing sound of guitars, voice and percussion that stands as more than the roots of the blues – at times it’s like the DNA of rock’n’roll.
“Tinariwen began 25 years ago,” recalls Alhousseini Abdoulahi, better known as Abdallah, “with Ibrahim playing the guitar.”
That was the start. But it really began to come together in the refugee camps of Libya, where so many young Tuareg entered the military camps to become soldiers. Abdallah joined, and met Ibrahim again – and all the other members of Tinariwen (the name means deserts).
The guitar met the gun in rebellion and the band adapted old Tamashek songs to their new electric style. But they weren’t – and still aren’t – a group in the usual Western style.
“There are many of us,” Abdallah explains. “People come and go, it’s the nature of our people. We move. Sometimes there are six or seven of us, sometimes 10 or more.”
The group was certainly affected by the Tuareg rebellion against Mali in 1990, fighting for the rights of their people. Members were scattered all over, using the guns they carried. Even after peace came a few years later, “we would come together sometimes, then separate. That’s how it was.”
They recorded cassettes on boomboxes, which were endlessly reproduced and circulated among the Tuareg. This was the young, revolutionary sound of their people, electric guitars and voices raised in protest. And Tinariwen might well have continued to make desert blues for desert people if it hasn’t been for the intervention of Lo’Jo.
The French band was recording in Bamako, Mali in 1999, and met some of the members of Tinariwen, and invited them to France to perform. They were astonished by what they heard, the primal attack and slow-burning fire of the music. You didn’t need to speak Tamashek to be affected by it.
From that came the first Festival in the Desert, held on the western edge of the Sahara. It also brought Tinariwen’s first real album, The Radio Tisdas Sessions. Recorded at a radio station (Radio Tisdas) in the desert town of Kidal with Robert Plant’s guitarist at the controls, it showed the deep trance and passionate blues of the group, with the interlocking guitar lines creating a marvelously hypnotic spell. An enthusiastic supporter of the band, Plant would bring them to the attention of European media.
Released in 2002, The Radio Tisdas Sessions unleashed Tinariwen on a much wider world, which listened appreciatively and enthusiastically.
Their more recent album, Amassakoul, was the first time all the members had been in a real recording studio.
“We came to Bamako and took a house there for a month,” Abdallah recalls, “so we could work on our ideas. Then we went into the studio and recorded the album in three days.”
The result is a revelation. It builds on what they’d created with their debut, while cranking up the power of the guitars and the voices. There’s a groove that hadn’t been there before, loping in the rhythm of camels across the desert. And the rock’n’roll, utilizing three guitars, sounds like a cross between the seminal beat of Sun Records and Exile-era Rolling Stones. There’s even a kind of rap song, Arawan to touch the younger generation. Lyrically the concern is still focused on the plight of the Tuaregs, but, Abdallah explains, “things are much better now, since the treaty. We can come and go as we like, we can live. So we sing about lots of other things, about the way other people are treated, too, all over the world, and the way governments act.”
Fighting for their beliefs, both literally and metaphorically, is hardly new to the group. Finding themselves the subject of a success story certainly is. Since the release of Amassakoul they’ve been covered in praise, become a favorite of critics worldwide. They’ve also spent plenty of time on the road, both in Europe and recently on their first U.S. tour, where the reviews have been gushing.
“There are six of us touring this time,” notes Abdallah. “Normally there are seven, but we’ve had to cut back for this tour for expenses. But people seem to like what we’re doing. From here we have to play a few dates in France, then we’re going back to Bamako, where we may record some more.”
In France they stay with Lo’Jo at their communal house in Angers, keeping alive the bond that began five years ago. In many ways, that 1999 meeting changed the lives of Tinariwen. Now they’re making a living from music, something they could never have dreamed of doing at home, where the idea of gigs is basically nonexistent.
But in other ways, everything is as it was before. Members drift in and out of the frame, disappearing into the desert for a while, then returning, keeping the pool of players flexible and shifting. Yet that’s how they operate best, sparking off each other and seeming to continually dip into a deep well of communal culture.
To cap off a stunning year, Tinariwen have been nominated for a BBC Radio 3 World Music awards in the Africa category, something they stand a very good chance of winning. It’s beyond anything they might have dreamed off, back in the days when the rifles spoke as loudly as six strings. Maybe the fact that the band continues, and grows, is success enough. But for Tinariwen, to whom it’s always been about more than just the music, the struggle will always continue, if not on their behalf, then to speak out, to play out for someone else.
04/22/05
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