326: Libye: Musiques du Sahara, by Chet Féwet

Chet Féwet (Libya)
Libye: Musiques du Sahara (2001)
8 tracks, 57 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Tuareg guitar music is great – and you know that already, seeing as we’ve already covered Tinariwen (twice) and Kel Assouf on this blog. Those groups took the pentatonic melodies and loping rhythms of traditional Tuareg music and mixed them with the heavy riffs of rock and reggae to create the unique and, as it turns out, world-beating genre essouf. That’s what you get when a whole generation of Tuareg musicians from northern Mali get obsessed with guitar music. But what if those Tuareg musicians were from elsewhere, and their musical tastes skewed in a different direction?

Enter Chet Féwet, a group from the Fezzan region of south-western Libya. They are Tuaregs, and they play traditional music with a regional twist, but they don’t use the tehardent lute, the imzad fiddles or the tende drums, or even guitars and djembe drum. They’re in Libya: their instruments of choice are the oud, the darbuka and the krakeb. It’s a really uncanny sound: the bare bones of the music is very recognisable as the Tuareg sound, the songs and the oh-so-bluesy tunes and the slightly camel-loped groove, but then everything else is different. The instruments lend themselves to different elaborations on the melodies, and so it sounds more Arabic just from being played on the oud, and the rhythms of the darbuka and krakebs pull in both east and west directions respectively.

I find this album so interesting. It’s like listening to an alternative universe version of a type of music that is so well-known – you feel as if you know it but it’s totally new at the same time. Add in the fact that so little Libyan music is heard outside the country itself – I think I only know of one other Libyan musician, the pop singer Ahmed Fakroun – and this disc offers up so many unexpected delights for the ears and the mind. It makes me wonder what other alternate musical histories that culture clashes around the world have thrown up – things like Uyghur psychedelic folk electric guitarist Ekhmetjan or the 100% Bollywood of Kenyan Swahili singer Juma Bhalo - and all of those doubtless myriad fascinating musical coincidences that I’ve never heard and may never still. What a wonderful world of music we live in.

133: Ténéré, by Groupe Tinarwen

Groupe Tinarwen (Mali)
Ténéré (1993)
8 tracks, 39 minutes

You’ll notice I’ve not put up any download or streaming links up at the top, because there just aren’t any. This is a cassette from Tinariwen, recorded in 1992 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and released in 1993 for a West African, especially Tuareg, audience. That was eight years before they made their first international release, and this cassette fell into obscurity. It’s never been reissued in any capacity; the most I can really do is embed this YouTube video of the album’s opening track:

I actually did manage to find a download for the whole thing ages ago, but that seems to have disappeared now – get in touch if you want to hear the whole thing.

So what’s so special about this then, compared to the album Amassakoul that I wrote about in March, or any of their other six albums that have made them famous around the world? Well, just listen. Those albums don’t have drum machines, piano loops and layered synths all over them for a start. Nowadays, Tinariwen are known for their moody, stripped-back and atmospheric grooves; this mad cheesy production sounds completely bizarre in comparison and I absolutely love it.

Those production elements are only on the first side of the album, with the second four tracks being closer to that classic essouf sound – the mixture of Tuareg traditional music with elements of rock and Algerian raï that Tinariwen are believed to have invented – which gives an idea of how that sound evolved, but of course it’s those first four tracks that intrigue me the most.

I actually asked Justin Adams, producer of several of Tinariwen’s earliest international releases, about this particular tape a while ago. From what the band had told him, the keys and drum machines were the idea of the Ivorian producer tasked with making the album, as he felt it would make for a more attractive commercial product for that market. And I think that’s what I like about this album, it sort of explodes the rather popular idea that Tinariwen’s music is a sort of lost-in-time sound, a mummified ancestor to the blues that was discovered caked in desert sand; that their use of cheap and gnarly electric guitars was their only concession to the century as it existed outside of the Sahara. There’s no doubt that Tinariwen’s music draws on deep histories, but when they first became famous among the Tuareg it’s because they were essentially a pop band. Their lyrics were the most important thing to their Tamasheq-speaking audiences, but the way they played and produced their music was shaped by ideas on what would sell the most tapes. And when it came time to make records to sell abroad, their sound changed subtly to be most attractive to that market as well.

I can see why this album has gone unacknowledged by the band’s European/American record labels to this day – it does break down a part of the mythos that is, by now, sure to have been quite carefully curated, and let’s face it, it’s not really in keeping with the musical brand they’ve got going on nowadays. But I reckon if they reissued this tape, it would get people’s attention and sell well for that. Here’s hoping, at least.

125: Enregistrés Pour Yehia le Marabout, by Super Onze de Gao

Super Onze de Gao (Mali)
Enregistrés Pour Yehia le Marabout (1994)
2 tracks, 47 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

Super Onze are the masters of takamba music. It’s a style with an interesting history, having originally been associated with the nomadic, Sahara-dwelling Tuaregs, over time, it became popular with Songhai musicians in the north of Mali, who brought in their own influences and made it their own. Now takamba is mostly known as a Songhai style, but one that retains the signature lope and slightly Arabic sound from Tuareg music.

At its heart, takamba music is one rhythm – always the same, it’s the takamba rhythm – played on two calabashes or, less commonly, one calabash and a metal drum (such as a cooking pot or a jerrycan). For those of you who understand TUBS, here is the rhythm as described by Banning Eyre:

|: X.X...X.X... | X...X...X... :|

Here are Super Onze’s percussionists playing the takamba rhythm, and improvising on it:

On top of that rhythm, the melody is provided by at least one kurbu, or as we often call it, an ngoni (Super Onze have two). The kurbu plays a short riff that repeats on as long as you want, often improvising on that riff and providing endless variations. The vocalist uses all this musical information to create an epic improvised sermon of praise – sometimes sung, usually recited – to whoever the patron happens to be, perhaps the bride and groom of the wedding party, the host of the political event, or even the person who commissioned the tape, which is the case on this one, in honour of a wealthy holy man (or marabout) named Yahia.

So that is takamba. But it doesn’t really tell you what’s so electrifying about Super Onze du Gao. For starters, it’s because they are electrified – their kurbus are hooked up to amps and the whole thing is run through bullhorn speakers. Then it sounds like it was direct onto a tape deck, and then transferred from there (probably after quite a few cassette copies) to digital. Distortion is added at every step along that journey, so by the time you’re listening to it, those lutes sound like some of the dirtiest punk blues guitars, and the calabashes sound like cracks of electricity. Their improvisations on just the one short rhythm and super bluesy riff last for the entirety of a two-sided cassette – just over 20 minutes per side – and you’ll fall into a deep desert blues trance if you’re not careful. It’s all so raw that I’m surprised it hasn’t been picked up in other situations: for me, this music is crying out to be looped and sampled, and used for the basis of a hip-hop track. Get on it, producers.

Takamba is huge in the north of Mali, but it’s not really permeated outside of the country to any significant degree. Considering how popular Malian music is in Europe and the Americas, perhaps that won’t be the case for very long. I hope that Super Onze will be the ones to bring this amazing sound to the world.

070: Amassakoul, by Tinariwen

Tinariwen (Mali)
Amassakoul (2003)
11 tracks, 46 minutes
YouTube playlist (it’s not 100% perfect, but you’ll get the idea) • Spotify (not in the UK) • Amazon Music

On the very second day of this blog, we talked about Kel Assouf, who I consider to be probably the most exciting band playing Tuareg guitar music at the moment. They bring a fresh, new energy to a fairly crowded marketplace. And – having seen them live again recently, I can confirm, they are brilliant…but can anyone ever live up to the originators? I’m not too sure.

At the beginning there was Tinariwen. Formed in the military barracks of Libya and the refugee camps in southern Algeria by Tuareg musicians with roots in Kidal in the Malian portion of the Sahara, Tinariwen were, by all accounts, the first to take the traditional Tuareg music and play it on electric guitars, adding in ideas from Dire Straits, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley while they were at it. That was back in the 1970s, and the style they created became known as essouf, tishoumaren or simply ‘guitar.’ By the time Tinariwen came to the attention of Western music biz people in the early 2000s, they were already legendary throughout the Sahara. Their first international release came in 2001, but it wasn’t until their second album, Amassakoul, that Tinariwen properly started to receive attention. Then they exploded and the rest is history – they’re one of the biggest African bands of today, commanding audiences well outside of the typical ‘world music’ set, playing huge venues and collaborating with many top artists, as well as spawning many, many imitators and innovators.

I reckon that Amassakoul was the turning point for Tinariwen’s international career, and its quality backs it up. It showcases everything that gave the band such a striking sound when they first started performing in the UK. The loping, camel's-gait rhythms, the droning guitars and the unmistakable and unique way they are played, the sun-baked bluesiness of it all. It is so spacious, and it’s hard not to feel the beating sun and mile upon mile of bare sand completely ingrained within the music. It’s also interesting to hear bits of the band’s music that were eventually left by the wayside, such as the breathy odili flute so evocative of the desert wind. The only thing that the album doesn’t capture is the band’s striking image: between seven and ten towering figures, in long, flowing robes and with their faces almost entirely covered by the iconic tagelmust turban-veils, swaying slightly while the fingers upon their guitars make almost imperceptible movements that result in beautiful sounds.

Tinariwen have gone on to release lots more albums, and to even more critical and commercial success than this one, but Amassakoul, released at the beginning of their international career, is still the one that, for me, perfectly captures everything that made Westerners so crazy for Tuareg music of all sorts, and turned Tinariwen into global stars.

055: Moorish Music from Mauritania, by Khalifa Ould Eide & Dimi Mint Abba

Khalifa Ould Eide & Dimi Mint Abba (Mauritania)
Moorish Music from Mauritania (1990)
11 tracks, 68 minutes
Bandcamp • Spotify • iTunes

This album was one of the first releases from the now-legendary World Circuit Records, as well as one of the earliest releases of Mauritanian music intended for a wider international audience.

The music of Mauritania is a mirror to the country’s geographic and cultural position. Mostly in the Sahara desert, the country marks the crossover between the Arabic and Berber cultures to the north and the Mande, Songhai and Wolof cultures to the south. The music of the Bidhan (or Moorish) population of Mauritania reflects this well: their melodies are mostly pentatonic but with ornaments that sound almost like classical Arabic music at points; their string instruments such as the ardin and tidinit resemble the donsongoni and the ngoni of the south, but their drums and percussion are more Arabic. It’s a fascinating sound, but what really attracts me is that it is so, so bluesy all the way through. Just listen to the chorus melody on the first track, ‘Waidalal Waidalal’ – it’s got some crystal clear examples of blues notes that make me want to do a full-on power ballad fist-pump.

Although guitarist and tidinit player Khalifa Ould Eide is given the first credit on the album cover, I cast no shade upon his skill when I say that it is most definitely Dimi Mint Abba who is the star of this one. Her voice is sublime. The control she holds over the notes she sings is absolute, allowing her to make incredibly subtle changes to the pitch and tone to give the slightest difference in inflection, changing the whole emotional atmosphere of a passage. Her high notes soar over the low-pitched tbal drums and she can go from quiet and delicate to straight-up roaring without so much as a blink. She was said to be the favourite singer of Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré, and it’s a real pity that there seems to be no recordings of them playing together – especially as they both shared a record label for a long time.

Mauritania is still rather underrepresented on the world stage of music, I feel, although lately a star has emerged in Noura Mint Seymali – perhaps it’s not a coincidence that she is Dimi Mint Abba’s step-daughter. Whether it is the more traditional style of music as heard on Moorish Music from Mauritania or the rockier stuff that Noura has been making the world dance to, I would love for this wonderful music to get more exposure. Maybe I should start a #MoreMauritanianMusic campaign…

002: Tikounen, by Kel Assouf

Kel Assouf (Niger/Belgium)
Tikounen (2016)
12 tracks, 50 minutes
Bandcamp · Spotify · iTunes

When I saw Kel Assouf live for the first time at WOMAD in 2016, it was a breath of fresh air.

For a long time, the Tuareg guitar music that was so exciting when Tinariwen first crept onto the scene – seemingly direct from the heart of the Sahara desert with their loping grooves and tagelmust headdresses – had really lost its shine. There were just so many Tinariwen-alikes, none of whom came close to the original, and very little variation on the theme. Maybe there was a drum kit here, a little distortion there, but nothing mind-blowing. Even earlier on at the same WOMAD festival, Imarhan, who had been touted as the next big stars of this genre called essouf, just struck me as more of the same.

But then, Kel Assouf happened. Their sound was huge. Fronted by Anana Harouna brandishing a flying-V with relaxed ease and backed by a mix of Belgians and Nigeriens on drums, synths and bass, this was some of the heaviest punk blues I’d heard for a long time. It still had all of those elements so striking of Tuareg music – the forever repeating riffs on one chord, the camel-gait rhythms, the spacious pentatonic melodies – but it all came together with crashing cymbals, aggressive distortion and delays, and funky bass from the synth. There were also rhythms from further north, Morocco and Algeria, and organ that could have been straight from Billy Preston. They actually looked and sounded like they were having the time of their life. Yes! This was the kick up the arse that it needed to be!

Tikounen is the album that captures the heaviness and excitement of Kel Assouf the best, so far, but that may change next month: their first album in three years, Black Tenere, comes out at the end of February, so that’s one to keep your ears out for. But until then, this album will more than suffice – get it on, get it loud and get moshing!