Interview with Toumani Diabaté

Peter Culshaw interviews Toumani Diabaté.

When I visited the great Malian kora-player Toumani Diabaté’s compound in Bamako to pay my respects a few years ago, it was clear he is a big man locally, “a godfather – chef de famille”, he calls himself. There were seemingly scores of children running about. “I am the eldest son,” he said. “It is my responsibility to look after the families of my brothers and sisters.” So how many children does he have? “That is not the point. This one is Toumani’s, or that one. They all call me uncle.” Family, he says, “is something you have lost the importance of in the West”.

I was in good company paying court to Diabaté in Bamako – both Björk and Damon Albarn had also done the same before recording with him. The evening after meeting him at home, he was playing, with his band the Symmetric Orchestra, some of the funkiest music I’ve ever heard to a crowd of hundreds of dressed-to-the-nines dancers in his old club, the Hogon.

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Ali Farka Touré - "Niafunké"

Essential World Music Records #1: Ali Farka Touré - "Niafunké"

Before Ry Cooder started the Cuban boom thru the Buena Vista Social Club project, he had already recorded "Talking Timbuktu" with Ali Farka Touré. Artistically "Talking Timbuktu" represented the definitive affirmation of a Malian blues man that from then on, intensified the number of shows worldwide, in personal terms however it meant a drift from values that he considered more important.
Ali Farka Touré was never happy with the show business life, many were the times that Touré thought of abandoning his life as musician. This sentiment is reflected in his last rare live appearances outside their natural environment: the village of Niafunké, on the edge of the Sahara Desert, around the Niger River, where there is no electricity or running water. There, Ali Farka Touré, father of 11 and 60 years old, has put the cultivation of the land above the music, investing all the money earned from this activity in agricultural machinery. He felt a certain discomfort in his successive world tours for losing the essence of his roots, it would be inevitable to record Niafunké the 'place of origin of this music - deep Mali', recorded by a mobile studio fed by a generator.
"Niafunké" is probably the greatest album of the life of Ali Farka Touré and a serious candidate to best world album of the 90s. In "Talking Timbuktu" the production of Ry Cooder created a greater range of sounds that helped build the great songs sweetened for western ears; in "Niafunké" we see the return to land and sound of the first recordings that "Radio Mali" (96) document. "Niafunké" is the return of someone who matured his musical vision on a global stage and works the land every day. "Niafunké" may not have songs as melodic as "Talking Timbuktu", but gains in authenticity that is reflected not only in Toure's most audacious guitar playing, as the musicians accompanying him. The warm female choruses, the rhythms of the turbulent calabash, the djembe and congas to remind Oumou Sangare, the sound of Njarka 's trance, lead us into a journey of devotion and drunkenness and giving us all the purity of deep Mali, where the blues were born.

Habib Koité

Bonnie Raitt knows a thing or two about soulful guitarists, so when she declared that Mali's Habib Koité deserves consideration alongside legendary ax masters, even music fans who pay little attention to West African sounds took note.

"First there was Hendrix, then Stevie Ray Vaughan, and now Habib," said Raitt, who invited Koité to perform on her 2002 album "Silver Lining." "With his combination of chops and soul, he's the most amazing guitarist I've heard in years."

Koité, who opens a four-night run at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley on Thursday with his longtime band Bamada, has been making North American inroads for the past decade. He's released a series of gorgeous albums on Putumayo World Music, World Village, and, most recently, label/presenter Cumbancha (2007's "Afriki"), honing a gorgeous, lapidary sound built on traditional Malian instruments such as the gourd percussion calabash, xylophone-like balafon, and kora, a 21-string harp.

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The Rough Guide To The Music Of Mali

Bruce Elder reviews The Rough Guide To The Music Of Mali.

The music of Mali has everything. Compulsive, mesmerising modern rhythms (Amadou & Mariam's La Realite), sweet traditional ballads (Habib Koite & Bamada's Mali Ba and Rokia Traore's Kanan Neni), glorious finely plucked African stringed instruments (gasp at Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate's Simbo), the roots of the blues (Afel Bocoum's sonorous Ali Farka), exciting ensembles from clubs and dance halls (Babani Kone's Djeli Baba) and the rap rebel sounds of the desert revolutionaries (Tinariwen's Arawan).

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Toumani Diabate: The Mandé Variations

Simon Broughton reviews Toumani Diabaté's The Mandé Variations.

The West African kora is a felicitous combination of calabash gourd, cowskin and fishing line. In the hands of the Malian virtuoso Toumani Diabaté, it not only looks cool, but sounds sensational. And the title of Diabaté's new solo album, The Mandé Variations, suggests music to sit beside The Goldberg Variations or anything else in the canon of western music.

Listen to the lengthy opening track, "Si naani", and you hear an instrument that is indeed the equal of a piano, with a bass, middle-parts and a dreamy melody on the top. The 21 nylon strings are arranged in two vertical rows and are played with just the forefinger and thumb of each hand. The lines of music weave and intertwine in a continuous flow that grows and develops organically. It is helped on The Mandé Variations by a gloriously clear sound that would delight Alfred Brendel or Vladimir Ashkenazy.

The music of Toumani Diabaté is both captivating and puzzling, with an unmistakably courtly feel to it. Indeed, one of the first kora recitals in the UK, involving both Toumani and his father, Sidiki Diabaté, who came to perform at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in 1987, was part of a BBC concert series called Music of the Royal Courts. The court in question was that of the Mandé empire, which flourished in West Africa between the 13th and 15th centuries.

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Toumani Diabate: The Mandé Variations

Robin Denselow reviews Toumani Diabaté's The Mandé Variations.

The world's best-known exponent of the kora, Toumani Diabaté has spent his life demonstrating the extraordinary versatility of that west African harp. He has used the instrument to accompany all manner of artists - from the bluesman Taj Mahal to Mali's greatest guitarist, the late Ali Farka Touré - and has shown how virtuoso playing on the amplified kora can transform a rousing dance band like his own Symmetric Orchestra. Now, after a bafflingly long 21-year delay, comes only his second solo kora recording, a purely instrumental follow-up to the exquisite Kaira. It was recorded in just two hours, he claims, with no overdubs, and it is remarkable.

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Interview with Toumani Diabate

David Hutcheon interviews Toumani Diabate.

You don't get false modesty with Toumani Diabate. When he welcomes me into his Seville suite the Malian kora player casually refers to his forthcoming album, The Mande Variations, as his “new masterpiece”. The awkward thing is that in an age of spin and hyperbole, it is difficult to disagree with him. Recorded in two hours, it consists of eight one-take, no-overdub instrumentals of such dazzling virtuosity that Europe's world-music critics have been summoned en masse to Andalusia to watch him perform. There is a scrum as we clamour to get a seat near the stage in the tapestry room of the old royal palace, the Alcazar. We all want to see how he does it.

“Any time I play a kora what results could be a CD,” he says before the concert. “That's why I invited you here to see this show. I cannot explain what is happening when I play. It's like I'm fighting something. But you don't need to be African to understand the message. Just sit down and listen carefully. It will touch you.” The kora is West Africa's harp. A lute made by sticking a thick pole through the side of a large gourd covered in a cow skin and then attaching 21 strings (traditionally fishing line) in two rows to both the pole and a bridge on the gourd. “But there is more to the kora,” Diabate adds. “You have to understand that it is unique, you have to know the significance of each part and the way it is built, then you have to learn the techniques, the spirit of the kora, what the music is talking about.” Such as?

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Tinariwen Performance Review

Mark Jenkins reviews Tinariwen's performance at Lisner Auditorium.

It's been only a decade since the core members of Tinariwen, who performed Thursday night at Lisner Auditorium, were in revolt against the government of Mali. Nowadays, the group expresses the travails of the nomadic Tuareg (or Tamashek) people with music that meshes traditional melodies with twangy electric guitars. The robed and turbaned musicians' material doesn't offer a lot of variety, but its loping rhythms and scratchy, scrambling timbres are exhilarating.

Tinariwen is a loosely aligned outfit, and only five of the 15 musicians featured on its latest album, "Aman Iman: Water Is Life," appeared at Lisner. In promotional photographs, bushy-haired Ibrahim Ag Alhabib usually stands at the center, but on this tour Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni led the band (as he did in 2004). By singing solo or playing acoustic guitar Spanish-style, Alhousseyni sometimes varied the group's sound. More often, however, he joined the communal clatter of such tunes as "Tamatant Tilay," a onetime war anthem that works just as well as an ecstatic dance song.

If the members of Tinariwen were once outcasts, their opening act was a consummate insider: Vieux Farka Touré is descended from generations of Malian nobility and is the son of the revered singer-guitarist Ali Farka Tour¿, who died last year. Yet the two acts proved both musically and personally compatible; Tinariwen bassist Eyadou Ag Leche joined the opener for one song, and later Touré added his guitar to the headliners' arsenal.

Tour¿ didn't sing much, ceding some of the occasional vocals to his quintet's percussionist. The 50-minute set was haphazardly paced and didn't encompass the stylistic range of his recent self-titled album, which features two duets with his father. Yet none of that mattered whenever Touré unloosed his guitar, playing fluid, eloquent solos.

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Vieux Farka Touré

A preview of Vieux Farka Touré's performances in Burlington and Montreal.

hen famed Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré died last March there was speculation as to who would fill this musical giant's shoes. Worry no more. Vieux Farka Touré, his 26-year-old son, appears the heir-apparent to his father's title as "King of Desert Blues."

Malian blues is not like the American variety. Here, the soulful music that Black Americans created toward the end of the 19th century has a specific structure based on 12 bars of music with generally a three-chord major key structure. American blues guitar styles come in a variety of types from finger-style players to flat-pickers, but their common ground is the beat. Some also tune their instrument to an open chord, such as G or A and frequently use a slide to create the unique crying sound the instrument can produce. The words, when authentic, are about hard work, hard living, love and sex and living with "the blues."

Ali Farka Touré's music was widely regarded as representing a point of intersection of traditional Malian music and its North American cousin, the blues. Filmmaker Martin Scorsese characterized Touré's tradition as constituting "the DNA of the blues." He was ranked number 76 on Rolling Stone's "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time."

As the first African bluesman to achieve widespread popularity on his home continent, Touré was often known as "the African John Lee Hooker."

Vieux Farka Touré's blues, like that of his father, is based on a more lyrical guitar sound than the American variety. It forms a repetitive pattern with a pulsating bass line of just a few notes with percussion from instruments other than a full drum kit. Vieux's father was the premier stylist in this musical genre and traveled worldwide performing this unique music on an instrument, guitar, that is not native to the Sahara Desert.

Now we have his son to carry on the tradition. On his first self-named CD we find a mature guitarist whose sound on acoustic and electric guitars is both powerful and haunting. Vieux doesn't wail on guitar as Robert Cray or Eric Clapton might. Instead he plays very clean, distortion-free single note melodies avoiding crunch chords and electronic gadgetry.

Vieux's recording melds sounds from traditional Malian music with electric bass and also the Kora, or African harp. The songs are sung in a variety of dialects from this part of Africa and thus, for American ears, are both unintelligible and exotic.

Listening to this album, one is struck by the power of simple musical lines, simple guitar figures and chanted vocals. While American music wants to propel the listener to new spaces, Malian music wants the listener to stay put, transfixed in a single line of musical content, as if to fully digest the message.

If you are unfamiliar with this style of guitar playing and musical expression you have two chances to hear Vieux Farka Touré and his band. They'll be at Higher Ground in Burlington on Nov. 11 and in Montreal on Nov. 23 at Club Soda.

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Tinariwen

Interview with Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni, Tinariwen's guitarist and singer.

The Tuareg people of West Africa are descended from nomads who traveled in caravans along the Sahara desert. They've been fighting for an independent homeland for decades and in the '80s, the Tuareg rebelled against the nation of Mali. The struggle has often been violent and bitter, but a group of musicians emerged out of the rebellion.

The members of Tinariwen, which translates as "open spaces," put down their weapons to combine traditional musical styles with blazing electric guitars.

Earlier this year, Tinariwen released its third album, Aman Iman: Water Is Life. The band creates a unique sound all its own with blues and African percussion and poetry.

One of Tinariwen's guitarists and singers, Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni, grew up in the desert. It wasn't until 1982, when he went to Algeria, that he heard the music of Tinariwen and legendary desert-blues guitarist Ali Farka Toure.

"It was the first time I heard Tamasheq voices singing with guitars," Alhousseyni says in an interview with Scott Simon. "At home, we didn't have those kind of instruments — just the flute and the tom-tom drum — and for me to hear the guitar and the Tamasheq voices was very moving, very beautiful."

Around the same time, his experience with the guitar was also new and exciting.

Initially, Alhousseyni had a certain resistance to the guitar because of its traditional role with the griot culture's traditional hereditary musicians. But he was attracted to the guitar through other players learning the instrument, and finally in 1986 the barriers came down and he decided to fully embrace the guitar. While electric guitars are not a traditional part of Tuareg life, Tinariwen was a group coming up in the context of rebellion.

"One of the goals of the rebellion was to bring modern things to the desert, to upgrade our lives," Alhousseyni says. "The electric guitar was one of those things we could bring. We found that there was a very natural fit with the guitar and our way of traditionally singing that was just very beautiful and very pleasing."

Still fighting in song, Tinariwen seeks to give its people recognition with the words, music and actions of its members' everyday lives.

"I am not a politician," Alhousseyni says. "We are artists. And yet we live in a time where the Tuareg can't really make these separations as clearly as that. We have to be artists, politicians, nomads, businessmen — everything. I feel that our culture needs to have not necessarily a homeland, but a special consideration within the society. We don't want to just blend into the general population. Our culture is very distinct and must be able to preserve its distinct identity."

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Tinariwen

Paul Fisher interviews Tinariwen's manager Andy Morgan.

Tinariwen are arguably the hottest act in world music right now. A group of nomadic Tuaregs from the southern Sahara desert in Mali who play a pulsating brand of "desert blues" on electric guitars, their epic journey has already become the stuff of legend. Founded at the end of the 1970s, they wrote songs of the suffering caused by catastrophic droughts, the pain of exile and struggles for political freedom.

In the early '80s they were lured into Col. Gadaffi-sponsored military training camps in Libya. Their songs became the mouthpiece of the rebellion of the Tuaregs — Muslim tribesmen descended from the Berbers of North Africa who share their own language, Tamasheq.

By 1990, the main members of the group were armed with Kalashnikovs and fighting in Tuareg rebellions in northern Mali and Niger.

In 2001 they helped organize the Festival in the Desert, where they were seen by Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, one of a growing list of rock stars championing their music — and their cause — that includes Carlos Santana, Thom Yorke of Radiohead and U2's Bono.

According to their manager, Englishman Andy Morgan, who also first saw them at the inaugural Festival in the Desert, the story shouldn't get in the way of the music.

"Tinariwen are musicians first and foremost. The older members of the band did receive military training in the Libyan camps, and most of them also took part in the rebellion of '90-'91. But they consider this an episode . . . brief, painful, harrowing . . . but an episode nonetheless. They were musicians before it happened, and they've been musicians ever since.

"In the late 1980s, when Mali was still dominated by the military dictatorship of Moussa Traore [the leader who took power in a coup in 1968 and led Mali for 23 years], there seemed to be no other way for the Tuaregs to make themselves heard or respected other than taking up arms and fighting."

Talking music, their now trademark sound emerged when one of the founders of the group, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, transposed Tuareg melodies to the electric guitar, adding in blues, rock, and Berber and Arabic influences. This was a radical approach to a fairly rigid tradition, but one that didn't cause much adverse reaction.

"There was no Dylanesque backlash," says Morgan, referring to the reaction of some Bob Dylan fans when the folk singer went electric in 1965. "Tuareg society and culture was simply too dispersed, and too isolated, for such a 'unified' cultural phenomenon as a backlash to occur.

"On the other hand, I think that there was definitely a generation gap between the youth, or the ishumar, as they're known, and their parents, who had grown up in the '40s and '50s and who only knew a very ancient nomadic existence, with clear social standards and hierarchies."

Tinariwen in some ways symbolize a new way of life for the Tuareg. "They are the first generation of Tuareg to have significant dealings with the modern world," says Morgan. "They were the first to live in exile, the first to deal with a wage economy, the first to travel far from their ancestral homes, the first to listen to Western rock and pop, the first to use the guitar as their main instrument of choice."

Indeed, it's difficult to understand Tinariwen without understanding their context in the history of their people. "To take a very specific example, in the old days, before independence, it was considered the height of bad manners for an adult Tuareg male to show his full face in public, unveiled," says Morgan. "The older members of Tuareg society still live like that. Eyadou, Tinariwen's bassist, has told me that he has an uncle, living in southern Algeria, whose full face he has never seen. In contrast, Ibrahim, the founder of Tinariwen, refuses to wear the veil. For him it symbolizes the old hierarchies, and old isolation of the Tuareg. It's what he has fought against."

Apart from attracting the praise of rock glitterati, Tinariwen have actively been promoted to a mainstream rock audience by their record company Independiente, whose roster includes Travis and Embrace. The Japan Times spoke with the group just as they were about to take to the stage to support The Rolling Stones in front of 65,000 people at Dublin's Slane Castle.

"I'm really really happy to be here," says Ibrahim Ag Alhabib. "For me it's like arriving in a special place after so many years of solitude and separation and suffering in the desert. I've always dreamed of this and now it's happening. It's a big experience. None of us really knew the music of The Rolling Stones before. But in the last few days I've been listening to some of their songs, and I love them. And I now realize that we did listen to the Stones back in the desert in the '70s and '80s but we just didn't know it was them. The problem is that we heard most of our music on bootlegged tapes, with no picture, no track titles, no sleeve notes, nothing. That's why we're always a bit uncertain about our Western music, finding it hard to name names. But the Stones are amazing. Their music has a power like the devil. It's very, very strong."

The group might not be expecting 65,000 to turn up at their concert in Japan, but their first visit two years ago did leave a lasting impression.

"I was very surprised that the Japanese are such big music fans," says Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni, another of the group's main songwriters. "They seem to love our music, and are great dancers too. That really impressed me. For some reason I had this image of Japanese people as being mainly interested in technology, but not the music itself. It was great for us. Also, the food is bizarre, but the whole protocol of eating is very beautiful. We enjoyed the whole ritual. We found that the Japanese are very kind, very welcoming."

Ibrahim adds, "I found the Japanese people great, but strange in that they're in the world, but they're separate from the rest of the world. It's really as if you arrive in a parallel world — human, friendly, but completely separate. Tokyo was absolutely the opposite of our home. I saw people walking in Tokyo in a way that I've never seen before. These waves of pedestrians . . . it was frightening!"

That tour was not their first contact with Japan. One of their members, Mohammed Ag Itlale, is even nicknamed "Japonais" as he is thought to look Japanese.

"Back in the desert there's a whole lot of people who look Japanese," explains Ibrahim. "Japonais is only one of them. Nobody knows why. Maybe the shogun came there a long time ago to do his business!"

Eighty thousand copies sold of their first two albums notwithstanding, it's still too early to tell if Tinariwen has managed to crossover to a rock audience or not, according to the band's manager.

"It's very difficult to judge, mainly because the music industry itself is changing so rapidly. Nowadays, the significance of record sales has changed. They're no longer the main barometer of success. Sales of 'Aman Iman' [their third and latest album, released earlier this year] have so far been superb for an African act, and frankly pretty modest for a rock/pop act," says Morgan. "But having said that, I'm always so surprised by the extent to which Tinariwen have pervaded many people's consciousness, especially people who don't class themselves as 'world music' or 'African music' fans. I keep getting proof of that. So maybe there's something happening out there. Time will tell."

For the group, judging success and their own mission is complex.

"On a personal level, the mission has much to do with earning a living, traveling the world, having opportunities which are so rare back home in the desert," says Morgan. "But on a much wider community level, Tinariwen see themselves as ambassadors of the desert, the Tuareg. They're really very proud of their home, and their culture. They want the world to know about it, to understand what they've been through and what they were prepared to give up in their lives, for what they believe in. They want us to know how beautiful their homeland is, and how misunderstood."

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Toumani Diabaté - Interview

Joe Tangari interviews Toumani Diabaté.

Toumani Diabaté likes to talk. I didn't try it, but it may very well be possible to interview him simply by saying, "Go."

What comes out is a detailed and rich telling of his family history, a dose of African history, and a lot of background on the kora, the West African harp he plays with astounding and perhaps even unprecedented virtuosity.

Pitchfork: Could you start by giving us a little background on the kora?

Toumani Diabaté: Well, the Mandinka Empire was about 700 years ago in West Africa. It was like nine or 10 countries together in the Empire. The kora came from there about 700 years ago. It's made with a special gourd called the calabash and cow skin and it has twenty-one strings.

The players were from the griot families. They carried on the memory of the Mandinka Empire, because 700 years ago there was now writing in books. They were there to talk about Mandinka history.

Pitchfork: So it was oral history.

TD: Yes. It was translated [handed down] father to son, father to son, father to son...That's why I became the 71st generation kora player in my family. The kora technically is three octaves, and you play it at the bridge with four fingers. It has basically three possibilities: you can play the bass line, you can play the melody, and also you can improvise with both at the same time. Only the kora can do that.

The kora is very important for the Mandinka people. You can play it with any kind of instruments in any kind of style. It's gorgeous, it's a perfect, complete instrument, normally played acoustic.

Pitchfork: Your parents were both musicians in the Ensemble National Instrumental.

TD: Yes, my mother and father were great musicians. I was born in the 1960s, when my country, Mali, got independence-- I don't call it independence, because my country doesn't need someone to say it's independent.

[But] this was when they formed the national ensembles-- traditional band[s] with all the traditional instruments: the balafon, the ngoni, the kora, and the women with the bright voices. The men were singing also. So my parents were in the ensemble and they couldn't get time to teach me. So I was listening to my father's tapes and recordings of my grandfather and also Western music. From that, I taught myself to play while going to school to learn how to read and write.

Pitchfork: So you were hearing all this traditional and non-traditional music. How did that affect what you taught yourself?

TD: I was teaching myself the traditional music and also...I had a dream when I was young. At that time I was hearing Otis Redding, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix. So, my dream was to try to play this music with the kora. I'm happy to say today that this worked very good. I've done different projects with Taj Mahal, the prophet of blues, Ali Farka Toure-- I won a Grammy Award with him-- the Spanish musicians in Ketama, and Björk. So my dream is really here.

I didn't want the Western people to say "Oh!" when they're listening to the kora music [adopts patronizing tone] "This is so very nice." I wanted them to join with this music, and to play with this music, because music has been created as its own language, you know? The "G" on the kora is the same "G" that's on a piano. It's the same "G" that Carlos Santana was playing. The "B" on the kora is the same as the one that the hip hop people have.

Pitchfork: So after collaborating with so many people from so many places, do you look for something specific in a potential collaborator?

TD: I'm happy to be this kind of open musician. I'm not just playing for the beer or the whiskey, you know? My music has a history and a legend. My music has a geography. It's for peace and love and culture, and I think it's for communication. I think the best way to communicate today is the music. So I really want to know, today, how come the kora is not in Hollywood? How come it's not in hip hop? That's my dream today.

So if you're open and you have any connection to that, just put it on. I'm ready to do it. Because I think that people need to know that African-American people, they have another thought about Africa. Today is not time to say anymore about the slavery and people being deported from Africa to the U.S., to London, to Jamaica. That's the past right? So we have now to move on and be together and collaborate. It's not right for people to give time to killing themselves with drugs because they lost everything in the past.

My father told me, he said "Look, son, the only one in the world today who doesn't have any enemy is the money, because everyone wants money. It's important that people come together, because if you make a lot of money, finally you will lose something in you. You will lose your culture. It's no good, because money can't do everything." Everybody wants money, but, when my father talked, the money talked also. [laughs] He said, "But the money just says, 'Nobody looked after me. I'm here, I'm the money, but nobody looked after me.' We did everything for money, but money couldn't get everything."

It's time to communicate between people and between the nations. That's the best thing.

Pitchfork: You've been playing with the Symmetric Orchestra for years now, but you've only recorded with them last year. Is communication why you finally chose to record with them? Was it time to communicate?

TD: It's a 20-year-old project, and I'm happy that it works, because it's the only band in Africa today that has musicians coming form different towns and countries and talking in one language-- that's the music. Like I said, it has a history.

Pitchfork: But as far touring with the band and taking it on the road for the first time, what communication have you been getting in response from the audiences?

TD: Touring... I've been doing it for about 20 years with different people. Touring is good, but the main time is after the show, when people come to me and say, "Your music touched me." That's really important. In Ottawa, after my concert at a folk festival I had a man and his family approach me and they said that when their daughter was born, they were looking for a name to give to her. Finally, they took the name of my song and they gave it to their daughter. They brought a picture to me. I've been seeing people crying at the concerts because of the music and when I talk about the history and how we play together. People will come to me and say, "Thank you so much."

Pitchfork: So as you communicate outward, what are you hearing from other musicians you're hearing as you travel the world? Have you heard anything in particular that stands out?

TD: Well, at a festival-- most of the concerts were at festivals-- you give and you learn. It's like if you're thirsty and you want to drink, you go to the store to buy water. You can't drink the whole bottle in the store, and the music is like that. You can't say "I'm finished with the music." I started playing when I was five years old. You can't know everything about music. You're always in the middle. I think it's not only music that's like that, but life for a human being is like that all the time. So when I go to a festival, I give from my heart, but also I learn from other musicians.

Pitchfork: So is that also part of the appeal of collaborating with other musicians? Like, when you play with Bjork, she learns from you and you learn form her?

TD: Yeah. Collaborating with different musicians from different culture is the same thing. I'm happy to do that, because they have something to say and I have something to say, and when we put that together, it's just happenin' and hopefully the people will love it.

Pitchfork: In your notes on your last album, Boulevard de l'Independence, you mention that you've been recording the Symmetric Orchestra during its residency at the Hogon in Bamako? What do you use those recordings for?

TD: Well, the Hogon Club for me is a laboratory. We play there every Friday night and people come from around Mali, but also foreign people, and if I compose a song, we play it to check how the people feel this music. And if it goes well with the people, we keep the song and it gets more exciting. When the foreign people come, also, there are no constraints. I tell them, "Play what you like." That's the way we work there.

Pitchfork: So was it different when you went into a studio to record the Symmetric Orchestra?

TD: The recording was live, so not different, really. I don't like to talk much about the project.

Pitchfork: Have you been working on other things since then, besides touring?

TD: Of course the Symmetric Orchestra is still a big project for me now. But twenty years ago I released my first solo album, Kaira, and I just finished to make another solo album, which is being released next year.

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Tinariwen - Aman Imam: Water is Life

Chris Pacifico reviews Tinariwen's Aman Imam: Water is Life.

Tinariwen's mixture of French and Tamashek in their lyrics makes their eloquence all the more enigmatically exotic. The opener "Cler Achel" sees the chanting like a vintage Bollywood film soundtrack atop supple polyrhythms. "Ahimana" is a sooty campfire hymn-a-long with clip-clopping, psychedelic rhythms and slinky mantras reminiscent of King Sunny Ade that slowly dashes upward and upward, yet is in no way a crescendo. Speaking of old world music in the vinyl vault, the brittle island dub and earthy resonance of "Toumast" and "Imidiwan Winakalin" got me digging through my crates to find my Cymande records.

Aman Iman is probably the most unfettered studio release yet by Tinariwen. Producer Justin Adams, who plays guitarist in Robert Plant's Strange Sensation, goes light on the technological touches to create a full-bodied, simmering listen.

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Toumast - Ishumar

Robin Denselow reviews Toumast's Ishumar.

Tinariwen may have brought the rhythmic, loping desert blues of northern Mali to an international audience, but they have competition. Moussa Ag Keyna, a former member of Tinariwen, is a guitarist, singer and songwriter who was also a member of the Touareg political movement involved in the revolt against the Malian government in the early 1990s - and was injured in the fighting. In his current band, Toumast, he is joined by a female singer and percussionist Aminatou Goumar, and French and African musicians led by his producer Dan Levy, who adds anything from bass to keyboards and saxophone. The songs sound like a lighter, more western version of Tinariwen, with some fine bursts of blues guitar work and light, insistent percussion, matched by far more gloomy lyrics. Many of the songs look back to the fighting with disillusion and sadness - though there's also a fine, personal and bluesy tribute to My Camel.

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Chris May reviews Authenticité: The Syliphone Years and Rail Band's Soundiata.

The 1960s and 1970s are often referred to as the “golden years” of African music. As more and more African countries freed themselves from colonialism, a wave of artists emerged who celebrated their own cultural legacies rather than those validated by their erstwhile European rulers. This post-colonial generation played roots-based styles employing traditional instruments and African-language lyrics, but also embraced advances in Western technology—electric guitars and fit-for-purpose recording studios in particular.

The music was the best of both worlds and, creatively speaking, the 1960s and 1970s were indeed golden years. With hindsight, they were also special for another reason—they came before the birth of world music in the mid-1980s. Prior to the arrival of a global audience, African artists made music intended purely for African ears. But as sales figures rose in Europe and America, many artists began to tailor their music accordingly. The results were not necessarily “worse” or “better,” or even “less African,” than what came before, but they were different.

Two recent double-CD releases preserve some of the most pioneering and long unavailable West African electric music of the post-colonial, pre-world music era. Authenticité: The Syliphone Years is a various artists compilation of tracks recorded in Guinea 1965-80. Soundiata is a collection of 1969-82 tracks by Mali's Rail Band, half of them featuring the band's celebrated early vocalists, Salif Keita and Mory Kante.

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Rail Band - Belle Epoque Vol 1

Robin Denselow reviews Rail Band's Belle Epoque Vol 1.

There was a time, in the 1970s and early 80s, when the National Railways of Mali could claim to employ the best house band anywhere in Africa, at the station hotel in Bamako. After all, Salif Keita began his career with the Rail Band, and after he had left, the new line-up included another great singer, Mory Kanté, along with that inspired guitarist Djelimady Tounkara. This double CD, the first in a set of three, is a reminder of those glory days that fails to quite do justice to this legendary band. There are some historic songs here, including the sturdy, rousing Soundjata, recorded in 1972 and featuring Salif Keita's soaring vocals on a praise song to the founder of the Mandingo empire. And there's an epic, if uneven, 28-minute treatment of the same theme, featuring both Kanté and Tounkara. It's a shame that the tracks have been assembled in an apparently random order from different periods of the band's career, rather than allowing each release to tackle a specific era.

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Michael Kessler interviews Tinariwen's members.

It has to be the most fascinating music story going around - a group of Touareg nomads from the Sahara Desert in northern Mali, faced with state persecution, flee to Libya. Some end up in Colonel Gaddafi's military training camps, where they record a set of underground cassettes.

Their music echoes over the sands like a siren and, heard by scores of exiled Touaregs in neighbouring Nigeria and Algeria, they become the voice and sound of a movement - the ishumar, the Sahara's Generation X.

They return to their homeland to mount a brief but violent rebellion. In 1990, they broker a peace deal with the Malian government. In 1991, they lay down their rifles. For guitars.

Tinariwen's music has won lavish praise. "The best rock'n'roll band in the world," said The Financial Times. "Sounds like a mirage: Keith Richards, Ali Farka Toure and Ry Cooder picking together," waxed Rolling Stone. "The kind of band that generations of Western rebel rockers could only dream of being," dared The Guardian.

In essence, it's a gentle desert blues, a sunrise-to-sunset trance on the pull of the land, human loss and the struggle of the Touareg. Indeed, as more than one critic has pointed out, this is perhaps where the blues as we know it came from.

Only Tinariwen would call it something different. "I got interested in music as a way of expressing how I felt about my past, my heritage," says Ibrahim Ag Halbib, lead singer and guitarist. "That sense of nostalgic longing, of loneliness, and suffering is our assouf, our blues."

Tinariwen's music is, as Led Zeppelin muso Robert Plant put it, "like falling in a well". The analogy functions on a number of levels - desert wells are deep, essential to survival and filled with a substance more precious than gold. Yet to make sense of the depth of Tinariwen's music, to understand how critical the pull of the desert is to their identity, you have to visit the Sahara. Which is what, after a 1000-kilometre journey through the desert, I'm fortunate enough to do.

It's here I meet Ibrahim, who is propped up between cushions inside our tent. Like many in the group, he lost family in the first rebellion of 1963. He clearly remembers his father being taken away; his weathered face drawn as he recounts his childhood loss. His expression wavers little as, between sips of tea and puffs on a cigarette, the conversation shifts to his discovery of music.

"I used to play the flute but it wasn't enough, so I got a canister, cables from my bike and a wooden pole and called it 'guitar of Ibrahim'. Some kids destroyed it so I made another one. Then when I was 17, I met a guy who taught me to play guitar. I was obsessed with getting an electric guitar and that man bought me one."

We're camped in the mountains near Tessalit, a few hundred kilometres down the road from Kidal, where many members of the group live. This is Mali's Adra des Iforas region, Touareg country where Tinariwen were born and bred. And it is here that they are truly considered heroes.

Which brings us to the reason we're here - the group are overseeing Mali's inaugural Camel Festival. Throughout the three days we're here, men in blue robes arrive on camels - replete with mobiles, Ray-Ban knock-offs and digital cameras. Jeeps of families loaded with mattresses arrive.

People descend on one another's tents to share tea, strum the guitar, chew the (goat) fat. There's no musical program but each night after the camel races, men, women, children and camels gather and howl to the electric guitars of nomadic Touareg groups from as far afield as Algeria.

Tinariwen were the driving force some years ago behind Timbuktu's Festival au Desert. What started off as a show of Mali's rich musical culture - Ali Farka Toure, Oumou Sangare, Habib Koite have all played here - has grown into something of a cult stopover for world music lovers.

But it's also attracted the mainstream of late, from musicians including Robert Plant to the likes of actor Johnny Depp. The festival seems to have outgrown Tinariwen, which is one of the reasons they've decided to go back to basics with a camel festival - a festival run by and for the Touareg.

The festival coincides with the imminent release of the group's third disc - Aman Iman (Water is Life). While no strangers to travel, they will tour Europe, the US, Canada and Australia to promote the album. It will be a chance to try a different kind of nomadism.

So are Tinariwen the next big crossover in world music? It's certainly the most authentic story to hit the music industry since the oldies of the Buena Vista Social Club were delivered to global audiences by World Circuit producer Nick Gold.

"It might be, but it's going to happen slowly because there's still a lot of resistance to non-English-language music, especially among radio producers," says Andy Morgan, Tinariwen's manager.

Word has it that Gold was once interested in signing up Tinariwen. He didn't and apparently he now regrets the decision. Desert blues indeed.

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Rachid Taha & Vieux Farka Toure at the Barbican, London

Vieux Farka Touré has a lot to live up to, especially with an electric guitar round his neck. The death last year of his father Ali, the great master of the desert blues, was a huge loss to music, and for his son to carry on the family business is a tall order indeed. Ali preferred Vieux to be in the Malian army than in a Malian dance band, but the mulish genes of the father have been passed down, and there is a crackle of expectation at seeing what this young man can dish out tonight, in an inspired pairing with the Algerian-born rai rocker, Rachid Taha.

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Joe Tangari reviews Vieux Farka Touré's album.

Vieux Farka Touré's debut album is a transitional work, representing the passing of a standard from a father to a son. Some of Malian guitar legend Ali Farka Touré's final recordings are here on his son's debut, which takes the signature desert guitar style of Ali and subtly builds on it. It's difficult for a young musician to step out from the shadow a parent so revered in the same field, but to his credit Vieux is content to move slowly and find his own approach to the style.

Vieux and Ali play together on two tracks, and their interaction-- the son plays rhythm guitar and gives his father's unmistakable leads free reign, with interjections from ngoni player Bassekou Kouyaté-- is not surprisingly marked by deference and respect. "Tabara" is a slow and meditative instrumental spotlighted by a mellifluous lead from Ali, into which Vieux perfectly slips his minimal backing rhythm. The other collaboration, "Diallo", is a conversation between Vieux's wizened, parched vocals and Ali's electric guitar, which carries his distinctive pinched tone. The rhythm is propelled by hand percussion, which is this case means sound actually created by the hands, without drums or blocks.

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Tinariwen at the Barbican London

Howard Male reviews Tinariwen's performance at the Barbican London.

As he begins the evening with a solo performance of "Tenere," charismatic frontman, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, barely tickles the strings of his Stratocaster and sings like John Lee Hooker at his most laid-back. Then the rest of the eight-piece join him, and we find out why this Touareg band are currently capturing the imagination of Mojo readers and world music fans alike.

Handclaps, and a hand-drum no bigger than a footstool, form all the percussive backdrop that's needed. This leaves plenty of space for the three guitarists, who are the heart of the band's sound, to interlock and interact, while the bass(pictured, below) throbs away in the background. One guitarist deals out angular chugging riffs. The other two issue wiry curlicues of notes, creating the illusion of baroque complexity in songs built from just one or two chords. The tone of the guitars is clean and sharp, but with an edge of distortion: the sound of electricity incarnate; no pomp, just pure African soul.

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