The Tinariwen story is mythic. Branded ‘war poets’ by the Western music press, their story is one of cultural and geographical dislocation, of war and struggle and hostile ecological environments, of hope and music and kinship. The players in Tinariwen are of the nomadic Kel Tamashek (or ‘Touareg’) people who once roamed the southern Saharan lands now comprising northern Mali. They formed in a Libyan refugee camp in the early ’80s; forced into exile in the wake of a Malian government crackdown. But it would be an injustice to merely frame Tinariwen’s agile, abrasive blues-rock with an exotic by-line. As new album Imidiwan: Companions proves again, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib and his band transcend history and heritage. Their most settled and comprehensive effort to date is just exhilaratingly good music. The stabbing, fractured guitar hooks, tumbling percussion and haunting vocals of their early records such as 2004’s landmark Amassakoul are there in force, but so is the full-bodied rock dynamics of 2007’s Aman Iman: Water is Life. The surging blues of tracks like Tahult In and Imazaghen N Adagh make for some of their richest and most fully realised melodies to date, while tracks like Intitlayaghen and the stunning Chibiba are two of their most tender. Indeed, what makes this suite of tracks so impressive is its completeness as a record. Imidiwan is about melody and timbre. Its words may be foreign, but its language is universal.
Shock
Dan Rule
