Tinariwen
Joy has abandoned us / exhausted by all this duplicity
Some of the best music to come out of northwestern Africa in the late 2000s and early 2010s was a genre called tishoumaren, or often more colloquially referred to as “desert blues,” a term that very accurately described exactly what the music sounded like. Tishoumaren allowed its practitioners—the Tuareg people of the Sahara region—to pour their hardships into songs about displacement and exile, and the results often did sound very much like early American blues: raw, world-weary, and electric. Tinymixtapes’ Split Foster rightly described Tinariwen’s sound as a “melding of the familiar and the exotic” for that very reason, and that familiarity makes it’s easier to get into tishoumaren as a western listener than most other forms of African music.
Tinariwen’s principal guitarist, songwriter, vocalist, and co-founder Ibrahim Ag Alhabib was always curious about the guitar since he was a child; bandmate Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni told The Quietus that “I think he just loved the idea of playing the guitar at a very young age and since the nearest guitar shop was thousands of kilometres away, he just made his own guitar out of a plastic water can, a stick and some fishing wire.” He eventually got an acoustic guitar, and with some other teenagers, formed Tinariwen in 1979 to play in local weddings that eventually grew into a collective of like-minded musicians that achieved international acclaim. They had been making cassettes and albums for almost two decades by the time other tishoumaren acts started recording theirs, which is why they’re the “older brother” to so many other tishoumaren bands. Imarhan frontman Iyad Moussa Ben Abderahmane is Tinariwen member Eyadou Ag Leche’s cousin, and Leche gave Abderahmane his first guitar, while female singer Wonou Walet Sidati was originally in Tinariwen before setting off and founding Tamikrest.
Robert Christgau—whose positive coverage of all these groups led me to them in the first place—once quipped that “all Tuareg guitar bands sound pretty much the same.” It’s true despite the fact that these bands might even come from different countries — there’s no instrumental texture! For one thing, despite being African music, there’s surprisingly little thought behind the drums—no tricky syncopation at all—and with regards to Tinariwen in particular, most of their songs don’t bother with percussion at all beyond handclaps to the point that the rhythm guitar often acts as the main percussive element. Which does work for them, but it also means that when the electric guitar works up a swirl, the results are never as psychedelic as they could be, and this applies to Niger’s version of Jimi Hendrix, Bombino (the closest Africa’s got to Jimi Hendrix is Bassekou Kouyate who plugged in a tiny instrument called the ngoni to results that rock way louder and harder than most of these electric guitar acts). There’s so much space and opportunity for tishoumaren bands to incorporate more texture, but instances like Tamikrest testing out Japanese string instruments on Tamotaït are annoyingly rare.
That being said, of all the tishoumaren bands, Tinariwen’s music simply feels the most special and this is true even though they groove less than Imarhan and rock less than Bombino or Mdou Moctar. There’s a sadness permeating their music which comes through Ag Alhabib’s soulful vocals even if you don’t understand the Tamashek language, but there’s also a forward-looking optimism in their songs. Their music wants to rebel, pull through, make it; they’re tired, but they’re still fighting.
Their first widely-available album was The Radio Tisdas Sessions released at the tail end of 2001, so named because it was recorded at a radio station in the desert outpost of Kidal. Despite featuring six guitarists, the album doesn’t rock out nearly as much as their later songs; the first song runs 7 and a half minutes without much in the way of dynamics, while “Imidiwaren”’s guitar-as-drum trick gets old quick for a song that’s almost as long. The best song is saved for next to last, “Bismillah,” one of the few times one of their songs can be described as fun.
Three of those guitarists are out by the time Amassakoul rolled around three years later, forcing Alhabib to start honing his songwriting and guitar craft, turning the guitar atmospherics into proper trancey rhythms, particularly on “Chatma” and “Chet Boughassa.” “Oualahlia Ar Tesninam” is the album’s best rocker — the low voices there are one of the few moments of non-guitar texture on the album until Alhabib pulls out the flute on the closer. Robert Plant’s associate/producer Justin Adams punches up the mix of Eyadou Ag Leche’s bass for Aman Iman, while also bringing with him the wah-wah which he lays thick on “Assouf.” The best song comes early in “Mano Dayak,” a delightful dance of different call and responses. But his presence is sorely missed as they return to Amassakoul producer Jean-Paul Romann for Imidiwan, an album that’s longer than normal without any highlights like the previous two albums. The song that’s the most interesting of the bunch—“Desert Wind,” a drone-ambient piece that’s exactly the title—is tossed away as a bonus track.
In the first half of the 2010s, there was a push of pairing tishoumaren bands with indie-cool western musicians, similar to blues artists pairing off with Mande music practitioners in the 1990s that was a general precursor to this genre (i.e. Ali Farka Touré & Ry Cooder’s Talking Timbuktu; Taj Mahal & Toumani Diabaté’s Kulanjan). Off the top of my head: Bombino’s Nomad was produced by Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, and follow-up Azel was produced by Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth, while Songhoy Blues’ debut Music in Exile was assisted by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner. This gave western audiences more reason to listen to these artists, but often these people did nothing for these musicians except quasi-celebrity endorsement. (Credit where credit is due, I think Bombino’s “Asamane Tiliade” is the best thing the Black Keys dude has ever done.)
For Tinariwen specifically, who had already worked with western producers by that point, this manifested instead in colourful collaborations moving forward that never took away from their spotlight and only added to the band’s communal sound. In fact, in some cases, you would never know a western musician was there with them without the credits; to wit, you’d have no idea Nels Cline (Wilco) and Kyp Malone (TV on the Radio) were on the first two songs of Tassili. So when I say Tassili is their best album, know that it’s not because of the indie stars that show up, but rather because it’s such a drastic change in sound for this uneclectic band. Swapping out electric guitars for acoustic ones, they also don’t bother with overdubs or any amplified percussion at all, mostly relying on their trusty handclaps but also letting the ring of the acoustic guitar perform the function of what would have been cymbals. The results are more soul (“Walla Illa”) and deeper groove (“Tenere Taqhim Tossam”) in their mid-tempo songs than ever before or again. Interestingly, most of the bonus cuts on the deluxe version have more percussion than the actual album, revealing that there was a conscious decision here to get this album’s quiet rebellion.
They promptly returned to electric, but unfortunately with less and less interesting features from here on out. Emmaar brings in late-period Matt Sweeney (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Skunk, Chavez, and Zwan) and Josh Klinghoffer (Red Hot Chili Peppers), and a spoken word intro from rapper Saul Williams, none as appealing as the sadly forgotten indie band TV on the Radio (who appear to be back?). Meanwhile, Fats Kaplin lays down some fiddle on “Imidiwanin Ahi Tifhamam,” but it’s absolutely buried by Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni’s electric guitar lead: you really have to squint your ears to hear it. The Kurt Vile and Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees)-supported follow up Elwan was cobbled together from sessions recorded in California, a Parisian suburb, and M’hamed El Ghizlane, a town in Morroco next to the Algerian border, and it sounds that way: for the first time, our band of travelers sounds physically exhausted.
Whatever appeal tishoumaren bands not named Mdou Moctar had in indie circles seemed to shrivel up around this time, which is a shame because they cast the net wider on Amadjar, a record that starts with violin loops courtesy of Warren Ellis (Dirty Three; Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) and then continues to pile in thoughtful textures like mandolin from Willie Nelson’s son Micah and guitar from Sunn O))) man Stephen O’Malley as well as never before seen percussion sounds from this band thus far. It’s their best album since Tassili, eight years prior, and proved the band still had plenty of terrain left to explore. And then follow-up Amatssou basically ditches all of that, although it’s clear COVID19 is to blame. Far fewer collaborators than their last four albums, and the original idea of going to Tennessee to record with Jack White was abandoned because of the pandemic. Surprisingly, linking up with Brian Eno understudy Daniel Lanois does nothing for them, and the album only proves something everyone no doubt knew from the get-go: that pedal steel guitar would sound good here.
That’s their core studio discography, although one of their cassettes from the early-1990s, Kel Tinariwen, was reissued thirty years later, offering a glimpse of a band that’s completely different than the one that would gain international fame decades later. Very little guitar. In fact, very little blues or rock at all: it’s a pop album filled with sunny keyboards and tinny drum machines that aligns early Tinariwen far closer to fellow Algerian Khaled’s pop raï than Ali Farka Touré.
For the record, I do hope they eventually make their way over to see Jack White because, despite my reservations with him, it’s doubtlessly that his back-to-basics ethos and deep love for modern blues would allow him to tap into an electric potential that’s always been there in Tinariwen’s music.
Kel Tinariwen - C+ The Radio Tisdas Sessions - B- Amasskoul - A- Aman Iman - A- Imidiwan - B- Tassili - A- Emmaar - B Elwan - B- Amadjar - B+ Amatssou - B-