Tinariwen

All Music Guide:

Tinariwen is a Tuareg group that performs in a Middle Eastern/African style similar to artists like Ali Farka Toure or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. All of the musicians originate from the southern Sahara, the group's name, meaning "empty places," is a reflection of their land of origin. The band formed in the rebel camps of Colonel Ghadaffi, as each of the musicians had been forced from their nomadic lifestyle into involuntary military service. Surrounded by a displaced nation of their peers, Tinariwen forged a new style of music, trading their traditional lutes and shepherd's flutes for electric guitars and drums. The style that resulted was dubbed "Tishoumaren," or "the music of the unemployed." Their music addressed issues such as political awakening, problems of exile, repression of their people, and demands of sovereignty. In a region with no postal or telephone system, their tapes soon became a grassroots voice of rebellion and a rallying point for a disenfranchised nation. Though outlawed in Algeria and Mali, 2001's The Radio Tisdas Sessions and 2004's Amassakoul are available to Western audiences. In 2006, they recorded their third album, Aman Iman: Water Is Life, released internationally in 2007 by Harmonia Mundi's World Village imprint. The album was produced by Justin Adams, and featured the voice and guitar of founding member Mohammed Ag Itlale. Tinariwen toured the world for the first time in its wake. They followed the album with Imidiwan: Companions, a two-disc set containing one disc of music and a DVD documentary about Tinariwen's history. This was once again followed by a world tour that included numerous festival appearances in the United States and Europe. Tinariwen signed to America's Anti imprint in 2010. The label encouraged them to experiment. The end result is Tassili, issued in 2011, in which the band recorded completely acoustically in a protected region of the Southeastern Algerian Desert. The tapes were flown to America where guitarist Nels Cline overdubbed electric guitars and New Orleans' famed Dirty Dozen Brass Band added horns, making Tassili a truly international collaboration.

Wikipedia:

Tinariwen (Tamashek-Berber: ⵜⵏⵔⵓⵏ, ⵜⵉⵏⵉⵔⵉ, tinariwén "deserts", plural of ténéré "desert") is a band of Tuareg-Berber musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali. The band was formed around 1979 in refugee camps in Libya but returned to Mali after a cease-fire in the 1990s. The group first started to gain a following outside the Sahara region in 2001, with the release of The Radio Tisdas Sessions, and the performances at Festival au Désert in Mali and at the Roskilde festival in Denmark. Their popularity rose internationally with the release of the critically acclaimed Aman Iman in 2007. Tinariwen's biography has variously been described as "the most compelling of any band" (Songlines), "the most rock'n'roll of them all" (The Irish Times), "hard-bitten" (Slate.com), and "dramatic" (The Independent).

The band released their fifth album Tassili on August 30, 2011. The album later won the Award for Best World Music Album at the 54th Grammy Awards.

Biography

Early years

Tinariwen was founded by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who at age four witnessed the execution of his father (a Tuareg rebel) during a 1963 uprising in Mali. As a child he saw a western film in which a cowboy played a guitar. Ag Alhabib built his own guitar out of a tin can, a stick and bicycle brake wire. He started to play old Tuareg and modern Arabic pop tunes. Ag Alhabib first lived in refugee camps and later resided with other Tuareg exiles in Libya and Algeria.

In the late 1970s Ag Alhabib joined with other musicians in the Tuareg rebel community, exploring the radical chaabi protest music of Moroccan groups like Nass El Ghiwane and Jil Jilala; Algerian pop rai; and western rock and pop artists like Elvis Presley, Led Zeppelin, Carlos Santana, Dire Straits, Jimi Hendrix, Boney M, and Bob Marley. Ag Alhabib formed a group with Inteyeden Ag Ablil, his brother Liya, Ag Ablil, and Hassan Ag Touhami in Tamanrasset, Algeria to play at parties and weddings. They acquired their first real acoustic guitar in 1979. While the group had no official name, people began to call them Kel Tinariwen, which in the Tamashek language translates as "The People of the Deserts" or "The Desert Boys."

In 1980, Libyan ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi put out a decree inviting all young Tuareg men who were living illegally in Libya to receive full military training. Gaddafi dreamed of forming a Saharan regiment, made up of the best young Tuareg fighters, to further his territorial ambitions in Chad, Niger, and elsewhere. Ag Alhabib and his bandmates answered the call and received nine months of training. They answered a similar call in 1985, this time by leaders of the Tuareg rebel movement in Libya, and met fellow musicians Keddou Ag Ossade, Mohammed Ag Itlale (aka "Japonais"), Sweiloum, Abouhadid, and Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni. All sang and played guitar in various permutations. The musicians joined together in a collective (now known as Tinariwen) in order to create songs about the issues facing the Tuareg people, built a makeshift studio, and vowed to record music for free for anyone who supplied a blank cassette tape. The resulting homemade cassettes were traded widely throughout the Sahara region.

In 1989, the collective left Libya and moved to Ag Alhabib's home country of Mali, where he returned to his home village of Tessalit for the first time in 26 years. In 1990 the Tuareg people of Mali revolted against the government, with some members of Tinariwen participating as rebel fighters. After a peace agreement known as the Tamanrasset Accords was reached in January 1991, the musicians left the military and devoted themselves to music full time. In 1992 some of the members of Tinariwen went to Abidjan, Ivory Coast to record a cassette at JBZ studios. They played occasional gigs for far-flung Tuareg communities throughout the Sahara region, gaining word-of-mouth popularity among the Tuareg people.

International recognition

In 1998, Tinariwen came to the attention of the French world music ensemble Lo'Jo, who traveled to a music festival in Bamako and met two members of the Tinariwen collective. Important was the then manager, Philippe Brix, today manager of Terakaft, a similar group. In 1999 some members of Tinariwen traveled to France and performed with Lo'Jo under the name Azawad. The two groups organized the January 2001 Festival of the Desert in Essaken, Mali with Tinariwen as the headliners, and in close cooperation with the Belgian Sfinks Festival. The festival brought much outside attention to Tinariwen. By the end of 2001, Tinariwen had performed at WOMAD, Roskilde, and the South Bank in London. Their debut CD, The Radio Tisdas Sessions, was recorded by Justin Adams and Jean-Paul Romann at the radio station of the same name (the only Tamashek-speaking station in Kidal, Mali) and released in 2001. It was Tinariwen's first recording to be released outside of northern Africa.

Since 2001 Tinariwen have played over 700 concerts in Europe, North America, Japan and Australia; including festivals such as Glastonbury, Coachella, Roskilde, Paleo, Les Vieilles Charrues, WOMAD, and Printemps de Bourges. Their 2004 CD Amassakoul ("The Traveller" in Tamashek) and its 2007 follow-up Aman Iman ("Water Is Life" in Tamashek) were released worldwide and gained the notice of celebrity fans including Carlos Santana, Robert Plant, Bono and the Edge of U2, Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Chris Martin of Coldplay, Henry Rollins, Brian Eno, and TV On The Radio. In 2005 Tinariwen received a BBC Award for World Music, and in 2008 they received Germany’s prestigious Praetorius Music Prize.

Also since 2001, the Tinariwen collective has added several younger Tuareg musicians who did not live through the military conflicts experienced by the older members but have contributed to the collective's multi-generational evolution. New members include bassist Eyadou Ag Leche, percussionist Said Ag Ayad, guitarist Elaga Ag Hamid, guitarist Abdallah Ag Lamid, and vocalists Wonou Walet Sidati and the Walet Oumar sisters. The band's 2009 album Imidiwan (Tamashek for "Companions") was recorded in a mobile studio by Jean-Paul Ramann in the village of Tessalit, Mali.

In July 2011 the collective set out for a new world tour that will include performances at the End of the Road Festival in September and All Tomorrow's Parties in December. They completed 24 performances in the United States of America from September 30 until December 1, 2010. Three members of the group appeared on the The Colbert Report on November 29, 2011 with TV on the Radio to play Tenere Taqqim Tossam and Imidiwan Ma Tenam from their 2011 album Tassili.

Musical style

The Tinariwen sound is primarily guitar-driven in the style known as assouf among the Tuareg people. The Tinariwen guitar style has its roots in West African music, specifically that from the "great bend" region along the Niger River, between Timbuktu and Gao. 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. The primary percussion instrument is the tindé drum which is played by women at festive occasions. Another important traditional influence is the lute known as the teherdent, which is played by the griots of the Gao and Timbuktu regions. In the late 1970s, when the founding members of Tinariwen started playing acoustic guitars, they played a traditional repertoire adapted to the western guitar.

Other regional influences include Berber music from northern Algeria, especially radical Kabyle singers like Ait Menguellet and Ferhat; the pop sounds of electrified rai music of Algeria; pop groups from Morocco like Nass El Ghiwane and Lemchaheb with their lute and mandol riffs; the classical pop of Egypt; and even Bollywood music. Tinariwen was also influenced by traditional Malian musicians, the most famous of which was Ali Farka Toure. In the early years of the collective's history, the members were also fans of bootlegged albums by western acts that had made their way to the Tuareg people, with favorites including albums by Dire Straits, Santana, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Kenny Rogers and Don Williams.

While the Tinariwen style is possibly a distant relative of blues music, via West African music, members of Tinariwen claim to have never heard actual American blues music until they began to travel internationally in 2001.