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CD Review, by Richard Gehr
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Vibe, CD Review, by Richard Gehr >>
AMAN IMAN: (Water is Life)
TINARIWEN
The musical heartbeat of the nomadic Tuareg people's ongoing resistance to the government ot Mali, Tinariwen was forged in the crucible of armed rebellion. You really can't top a creation myth like that. So while their third album evokes the daily tribulations of desert life in their southern Saharan homeland on tracks like "Cler Achel"
and "Assouf," politicai strife and struggle are never far away. "Soixante Trois" mordantly evokes the 1963 Tuareg rebeilion crushed by Mali's army, and Aman Iman's longest track, "Mano Dayak," celebrates a charismatic Tuareg scholar-rebel who died in a suspicious 1995 plane crash.
Musicaiiy, Tinariwen's blend of deeply vamping guitars, choral call-and-response Tamashek-language vocals, percussive hand claps, and ululating female voices would flow as smoothly as a cool creek on a lazy afternoon if these hypnotic songs, which seem to exist in an eternal present, didn't sound radically edited down to four or five minutes. "Toumast" barely builds up a head of steam, with a pair of echoing guitars grooving beatifically in 6/8 time, by the time it's over. Born in the wideopen desert, Tinariwen's mesmerizing music needs plenty of space. Hearing them cut short feels like yet another slight.
04/01/07
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