Toumast founder Moussa Ag Keyna fought for four years with guns.  When he was injured and a bullet ripped an open fracture in his leg, he picked up his other weapon—his guitar.  The result is Ishumar (Real World Records), an impressive debut of rolling guitar rhythms layered with trance undertones and melancholy lyrics. Enveloped by traditional melodies and contagious electric blues riffs borrowed from Jimi Hendrix and B.B.King, Toumast’s music offers the freshest take on the growing genre of Tuareg “desert blues.”  

Formed in 1990, Toumast represents the second generation of Tuareg ishumar musicians.  The term derives from the French word for unemployed and was the label given to displaced young Tuaregs searching for work.  Clustered in refugee camps, military camps and shanty towns, the young people began to produce music reflecting their fight for freedom.

The Tuareg’s are African nomads that formerly occupied most of the Sahara desert and its surrounding areas.  Europe’s carving up of the African continent created a division of Tuareg territory that continues to create problems for the group.  Tuareg’s are currently divided between Mali, Niger, Algeria, Libya and Burkina Faso and they struggle for independence to travel freely through these areas.  Uprisings in 1990 in Niger and Mali stimulated more attention toward independence and aid.  Another uprising erupted in 2007 after Tuaregs insisted that little progress toward independence has been made and uranium deposits in the Sahara keep tight government control of their land. 

The struggle for freedom continues and the popularity of Tuareg music parallels the visibility of their resistance movement.  Since the turn of the new millennium, Tinariwen, a band of indigo-veiled blues rockers, has led the Tuareg musical explosion that includes Tarit, Etran Finatawa and Kel Tin Lokeine.  All of the groups play versions of traditional Tuareg music, which uses a monochord violin called an amzad and a small goat-skin covered tambour called a tende, mixed with strains of electric guitars and the traditional female ululation.

Ag Keyna listened to Tinariwen as a teen, absorbing the groups’ electric guitar riffs as well as their rebel lyrics.  “For me, Tinariwen are like big brothers.  We all have the same objective.  That is what led us both to music and fight,” says Ag Keyna.  “I wanted to fight both ways: with music and with guns.  They are two different ways of fighting.”

The music of Tinariwen differs from the other popular Tuareg groups in that it displays a youthful, free-spirited, energy.  In traditional Tuareg society, it is the youth that listen to music.   The members of Tinariwen, mostly in their 40s, are elders while Toumast which includes Ag Keyna’s cousin Aminatou Goumar, are still in their 20s.  Toumast also stands out because although women enjoy a leading role in matrilineal Tuareg society, Aminatou is the first woman to play the electric guitar in a popular group.

She leads the vocals on “Tallyatidagh” with a high sweet voice and distinctive Tuareg trilling and joins Ag Keyna’s lead guitar for hip-shaking blues spiced with Tuareg rhythms on “Innulamane.”  Toumast means identity and that theme runs through all of the CDs nine tracks.  From the opening track, “Ikalane Walegh” (These Countries That Are Not Mine), which calls for Tuareg unity amid twangy guitar riffs, to “Kik Ayitmma” (Hey! My Brother!), which urges a rebirth in Tuareg identity, the album melodiously continues the battle for independence. 

“The master word for the Tuareg identity is freedom,” says Ag Keyna.  “You find it in our notion of boundaries, in our sense of honor and in our respect for women.  After decolonization, the Tuareg identity has suffered as we asked for an autonomy which has been refused to us.  The Tuaregs are still however, determined to ask for recognition.”

-- by Rosalind Cummings-Yeates