Album review

Tinariwen’s Desert Blues

New album: Aman Iman

Paris 

05/02/2007 - 

Fans of Tuareg music were royally treated at the end of 2006 with a whole series of interesting new releases. Now, after Toumast, the Desert Rebel project and Tartit, 2007 sees the return of Tinariwen, the group that spearheaded the Tuareg movement. The group’s third album, Aman Iman, a fascinating mix of the blues and desert tradition, revolves around committed political lyrics and sounds an urgent ecological wake-up call.

Tinariwen - aka ex-freedom fighters Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, Abdallah Ag Alhouseyni, Alhassane Ag Touhami and Mohamed Ag Itlale – hung up their guns over a decade ago now and shouldered guitars in their place. All four members of the group fought in the war against Mali in 1990, but reinvented themselves as musicians after a peace deal was signed three years later. "From now on", they declared, "We’ll use dialogue as a weapon and fight injustice through music".

This proved to be a clever move for Tinawiren’s first two albums - cited as a reference by the likes of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Robert Plant - caused a major stir, putting the group on the international music map and promoting the Tuareg cause abroad. Despite their impressive global success, Tinariwen have not forgotten their people’s long history. Far from it, in fact. Interestingly enough, a song on the new album pays tribute to Mano Dayak, the Tuareg opinion leader from Niger who has published a number of seminal tomes on culture and politics. Another song, 63, commemorates the year of the Tuareg uprising in Adrar N’Fughas (a mountain region in north-east Mali) which was brutally suppressed by the newly-formed Malian state.

Imminent Danger

While these songs both look back on Tuareg history, Tinariwen’s desert blues - tinged with nostalgia and fuelled by electric guitars - also raises topical issues in the present and warns of imminent dangers to come. Tinawiren’s lyrics militate for a velvet-style revolution, "making education available to everyone, improving general living conditions and giving people access to health, water and information. We need to educate people about what’s at stake in the world right now and raise awareness about current dangers such as the loss of reference points in an increasingly globalised world."

The title of Tinariwen’s new album is highly symbolic in itself. Aman Iman is an old proverb reminding us that "Water is life". Tinariwen are not only sending out an urgent ecological wake-up call. The song also recalls the suffering they experienced as children when, during the great droughts that devastated the Sahel in the 1970s and 1980s, the Tuaregs were forced to abandon their ancestral grazing sites which had all completely dried up. "Water is a vital commodity where we come from. And not only that, it’s a source of purification, too. Offering water is a symbol of giving life, but also purifying a world caught up in war. It’s time everyone shared water as a common property. Finding a common equilibrium is indispensable if we want to preserve the planet from conflicts in the future, particularly in the region you refer to as the Third World where the Tuaregs have to survive. If there’s one thing we want to do with our music, it’s raise awareness of this danger – a danger that’s all too imminent now!"

Tinariwen Aman Iman (Emma Prod/AZ) 2007
Tinariwen are on tour throughout April 2007 and will be appearing in concert at Le Bataclan, in Paris, on 7 April.

Jacques  Denis

Translation : Julie  Street