In reviewing the available online literature on Tinariwen there seem to be a lot of (perhaps over-zealous) African and world music “experts” out there now trying to differentiate the Touareg band’s sound from the “Desert/ Sahara Blues” or “Mali Blues” sound and coming up with increasingly convoluted ethno-musicological descriptions of what is, at its essence, a very simple musical concept: African blues music. Of course this is what ethnomusicologists and world music experts do. They find some music they think no one has heard of before them, describe, label and “produce” it to within an inch of its life and then get all riled up when it actually gets popular and people start calling it what is actually is.
However, even if they grew up in relative isolation from Western Blues recordings, Tinariwen sure as hell knew who Ali Farka Toure’ was and he, without question, played what has come to known as “Mali Blues”. To anyone who has heard either of the artists’ repertoire it is obvious that there are many more similarities than differences between the two.
Tinariwen (Tamashek: t-i-nàriw-en “deserts”, plural of t-è-nere “desert”[1]) have a twangy, guitar-driven tribal sound, with a heavy element of clapping and African percussion (djembe, mic’d gourd), and Tamashek vocals. “The core elements of Tinariwen’s music are traditional Tuareg melodies and rhythms including those played on the shepherd’s flute, which is primarily a man’s instrument; and those played on a one-string fiddle known as an imzad which is played by women.” From Wikipedia.
Their show at Roseland was harmonically rich but rhythmically uncomplicated and quite suitable for easy dancing as it generally stayed, by my count, between 80 and 110 bpm. The band seems to have the ability to entrance people with their live performance too. This is fortunate because that kind of magic is exactly what it took to get the audience at Roseland to actually move their bodies. The group plays a more filled-out version of Ali Farka Toure’s “Mali Blues” sound.
Incidentally, their opening act, Dusu Mali Band, is actually fronted by Toure’s nephew, Ibrahim Kelly, who lives here in Portland. Dusu Mali Band played a well-received, uptempo set and were probably the most appropriate opening band that Portland could possibly have produced for this concert. Expect to hear much more from them in the near future as they’ve been playing a lot this summer and seem to be gaining steam on the festival circuit.
Fronted by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib on lead guitar and vocals, Tinariwen mixes their slow-burning desert music with dance beats played on a djembe and a mic’d gourd producing the rough sonic equivalent of a bass and snare drum. The band also included a bass player (who strings his bass upside down), a second guitarist, a female vocalist named Wonou Walet Sidati, who would throw out the occasional trilling ullulations to energize the audience, and what NYC-based visual artist, Marela Zacarias, called “The Crazy Uncle” guy – a singer and dancer making wavy gesticulations to the crowd to get them to move to the music. It worked.
While there were a few moments of barking djembe solos and nearly rock-like guitar riffs, the whole show’s vibe and pacing seemed very deliberately mid-tempo, never really reaching any big crescendo points to speak of. This seemed to be the whole point though. It seems Tinariwen wants to give their audience a taste of what the Malian desert feels and sounds like: slow and hot. They were largely successful.
