Music from Africa Part 3: Tinariwen
We're heading towards North Africa for the third instalment in my series about music from Africa to meet Tinariwen, a Grammy Award-winning group of Tuareg musicians from northern Mali.
It's impossible to describe their history properly in only one short post, or to place it within the political conflicts that have torn the Tuareg community apart. Very briefly: the group was founded by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who, as a child, built his own guitar out of a tin can, a stick and bicycle brake wire. He formed a rock group with his friends in the 1970s, and in the next ten years they made music and fought in various rebel movements.
They attracted the attention of French world music ensemble Lo'Jo and their manager Philippe Brix at a music festival in Bamako, the capital of Mali. Since then they've toured regularly in Europe and North America; they won a BBC Award for World Music in 2005 and a Grammy in 2008; and they represented Algeria in the opening ceremony of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
Their music is characterized by their blend of instruments: guitar, shepherd's flute, one-string fiddle, lute and tindé drum; as well as the interplay of male and female voices. They were also influenced by traditional Mali musicians, especially the famous Ali Farka Touré.
Tinariwen has retained their nomadic roots: the group has never consisted of exactly the same line-up during its international tours. Some of their members tour regularly, but they remain a loose collective of musicians who get together whenever life in the Sahara permits.
The song I've selected is Sastanàqqàm.
Read more about them here:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/rebel-music-the-tuareg-uprising-in-12-songs-by-tinariwen
Today in Tokyo (who lives in Tokyo but was born in South Africa)
@todayintokyo
