Artist: Tinariwen
Album: Aman Iman: Water Is Life
Label: World Village

- By Justin Mitchell

The last few months have produced an array of albums from Mali and surrounding areas. Before you get a map, this is the Saharan nation, not one of the Hawaiian Islands. Mali has found a way to respond to American blues in a way that few Westerners would expect. Perhaps the genre's most famous figure is the legendary Ali Farka Touré. The last six months have offered a posthumus release by Touré, a debut album by his son Vieux Farka Touré and now one from Tinariwen. Though it is hard to define one as the most innovative or the most accessible, Tinariwen does have the small distinction of being the most recent.

As with much of the music of the region, these songs are filled with hypnotic guitar riffs and sparse vocals. Western Africa has a strange and beautiful way of combining electric guitar, traditional instruments and tribal singing into something unearthly, without a hint of new age. This region might feature some of the most exciting and innovative world music today, and Tinariwen does it with great style.

Hear Tinariwen on The New Music Show, Sunday nights from 10 to midnight and Thursday nights from 7 until 9, on 88.3 FM.