“Does it sound alright?” That was the question asked, over and over, by Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni, one of the two guitarists for the Saharan rock band Tinariwen from the stage of Brooklyn’s Bell House Friday night. He was concerned, perhaps, that his band’s music — hardly anyone’s idea of flashy or ostentatious — was being poorly received by the crowd, many of whom were standing stock still, staring slackjawed at the stage.
He needn’t have worried: if the crowd was motionless, it was probably because they were hypnotized. Such is the effect of Tinariwen’s deliberate, transfixing music. On their last two records — 2007’s Aman Iman and last year’s Imidiwan — Tinariwen crafted songs that favored a measured approach and tight swipes of guitar. The group sprang from tumultuous origins: after seeing his father slain by invaders, frontman Ibrahim Ag Alhabib and his family relocated to Algeria where, at the age of 20, he taught himself to play guitar and joined forces with other local musicians to create roiling, politically-informed music. Though the group has been around for nearly 30 years, Tinariwen first sprung to international prominence after a riveting performance at 2001’s Festival in the Desert where they were spied and lauded by, among others, Robert Plant.
If that performance was in any way similar to Friday’s Brooklyn show, it’s easy to see why Plant was so enraptured. Tinariwen seem to have the ability to stop time, working repeated chord patterns and rhythms over and over until they blur into a mighty, trembling whole. It was not entirely dissimilar to krautrock: the rhythm section, just bass and hand-slapped floor percussion, locked into a steady groove early, providing a sturdy undercarriage above which the group’s two guitarists, Alhouseeyni and the wild-haired, wild-eyed Alhabib, crafted a dreamlike latticework. Though the playing is intricate, the combined effect feels not so much like fretboard pyrotechnics as it does a steady, insistent chug. Sometimes that chug built to delirious ecstasy, and the songs were lit ablaze by the giddy ululations of Wonou Wallet Sidati, the group’s female vocalist. Live, the songs had a striking severity: Alhabib rarely smiled, and the low groans that comprise their vocal melodies felt harrowing and stark. And though it took them a song or two to get going (perhaps not coincidentally, Alhabib didn’t join the band onstage until song number three), by the evening’s midpoint they were soaring. The songs were so stunning and so circular that each one felt eternal — in the best possible sense. It was as if they were always existing, Tinariwen just tuned into them for 11 or 12 minutes at a time before releasing them, leaving anyone within earshot utterly spellbound.
In other words: yes, it sounded just fine.
