'IMIDIWAN: COMPANIONS' by TINARIWEN- the Desert Bears Fruit

Mali’s Tinariwen is one of only a handful of artists in the history of modern alternative popular music- The Beatles, Stones, Bowie and Elvis in the UK; Dylan, the Dead, Springsteen and Patti Smith in the US, Marley in Jamaica, Manu Chao in Europe, Carabao in Thailand, Mana’ in Mexico, and maybe… maybe… Cheb Khaled in Algeria- that is/was truly larger than life, whose reputation precedes them, that the term ‘classic’ becomes affixed to without hesitation. Of course first they must make it past the bewitching age of twenty-seven without self-destructing or fading away into uselessness, but most of all these are all bands or artists that mean something. There is something more important than album sales going on in each of these cases- politically, socially, and artistically- though the musicianship is never in question for any of them.

Of course as a band already well into middle age Tinariwen hardly has the oeuvre that the other artists had at a much earlier age, but then much of their best work probably still lies ahead. How many of the others can say the same? I bet they’ve got some of the best stories. And if life growing up in the desert seems like a curse, consider that they’ve also been very lucky coming from one of only a handful of places- besides Mali, maybe only Cuba, New Orleans, and where else?- that is truly musically magical. Thus when the Festival du Desert in Timbuktu was first getting off the ground less than a short ten years ago, you had the likes of Ali Farka Toure’, Oumou Sangare’, Justin Adams, and Robert Plant… yes that Robert Plant, there as participants and witnesses to something extraordinary about to take place, the unification of Mali by music, something still only tentative politically.

When I first became aware of Tinariwen only three short years ago, they were my big discovery of the year. Out of some 100+ CD’s that I gathered as part of my birthright as a first-time paying member of the World Music trade conference WOMEX, a short 3-song sampler by Tinariwen was my favorite. I turned other non-industry people on to it. Little did I know then of their preceding legend, guns and guitars and revolutions and revelations and all that, even less that they were about to break BIG, or big by world music standards anyway. Within a year they were opening for the Stones and touring small clubs in the US non-stop. Then I found out that not only had they already played the Festival International in Lafayette, LA, but they’d played for coffee at NAU in my own adopted home town of Flagstaff, AZ, courtesy of Blackfire’s Benally family, they themselves also veterans of two Festivals du Desert. I still have black-and-blue marks from my self-inflicted back kicks over that one.

Fast forward to the present and Tinariwen is past the heady days of their triumphant international debut and ready to prove their staying power. To take twenty years to produce an album or two is one thing. Can they do it every year or two? If their new album is any indication, I suspect they can. Imidiwan (‘Companions’) shows no signs of the slowing down, toning down, self-conscious caution, or the- God forbid- cover album that frequently afflicts a red-hot band’s senior thesis. Too often a real ‘thriller’ gets followed by something ‘bad.’ And they now have to contend with many imitators and band-wagoneers, too. Anybody can do their version of ‘desert blues,’ but there’s more to it than that. Many bands play ‘Afro-Beat’ also, but how many can sound like Fela? It’s the same with Tinariwen. If they were a one-trick pony, they’d have washed up on the sand long ago. Imidiwan shows the full range of their repertoire.

In my lifetime, most of the albums I’ve listened to I’ve only heard once, and maybe half that many again only twice. Though I listen more than that to any album I review, I probably listened to Imidiwan five times… in rapid succession. That’s the highest compliment I can pay any album. They’ve still got the magic. The opening song ‘Imidiwan Afrik Temdam’ is classic Tinariwen, meditative and reflective as the desert wind, and the second song ‘Lulla’ follows in the same vein, adding those soothing female background vocals that balance the sometimes-raw Tinariwen sound so nicely. ‘Tenhert’ is a rap-and-boogie-woogie number and ‘Enseqi Ehad Didagh’ a slow earthy blues. ‘Tahult In’ follows in the boogie vein, which is a pleasant evolution to the Tinariwen repertoire, an enhanced down-to-earth melodical feel. In general, the album maybe veers a bit toward Ali Farka’s earthiness, and away from raw desert edginess. Chabiba sounds so much like an American folk lament that I halfway expected to hear Townes Van Zandt join in on a verse. Maybe success is mellowing Tinariwen out… or maybe not. Maybe it’s rounding them out. The closing song ‘Desert Wind’ is a five minute instrumental that needs no DJ remix version to define its sense of space. The space is infinite. That’s Imidiwan by Tinariwen. The desert just got less lonely. Check it out.

Timbuktu or Bust

The Festival au Desert at Essakane, Mali, outside Timbuktu, is over now. I imagine it was good, but probably nothing like its early years. There’s no Tinariwen, no Ali Farka Toure’, and no Robert Plant. Robert’s gone on to other things, like a hit album with Alison Krauss and a reunion with the Zeppelin boys that got good reviews. I was never that much of a LedZep fan, but I can certainly appreciate what he’s doing these days. Tinariwen’s hotter than the Sahara in July, so hot that they’re spawning imitators like junkies on grunge. The movement is even crossing borders with impunity, as Tuaregs do, Niger now getting in on the act. Ali Farka’s gone on to that jam session in the sky, of course, but his son’s carrying on the tradition at Essakane, looking a little bit more Tuareg a la mode every day. I wanted to make it but just couldn’t justify the high expense, especially since there’s no way to avoid traveling during the holiday season. Flights fill up on Air Mali (Air Maybe) and the overland route takes time. So I had to content myself with GlobalFest in New York last Sunday, a single evening of twelve acts playing on three stages, giving new meaning to the term ‘cluster-f**k. This is the way showcases work, of course, but for some reason world music promoters like it special, as if the confusion adds currency to the cause. While that may be fine for a bunch of unknowns looking to be listened to, I’m not sure if that’s the best use of resources for established acts. Obviously you can’t listen to them all at once, so magic moments get missed. Not only that, but what might seem quirkily fun, running around the plaza in Albuquerque catching snatches of locals mixing and matching licks with foreigners from all over the world, becomes downright burdensome running up and down stairs in Manhattan’s Webster Hall, causing some tired legs and a general cluster-flock. GlobalFest has to compete with itself also, trying to live up to last year’s line-up which consisted of such luminaries as Andy Palacio, Lila Downs, and Dengue Fever, hard acts to follow.

The show started slowly with the typical European acts one must suffer through, violin, accordion, tuba, etc., to get to the good stuff. I mean it’s all GOOD, of course; it’s just that some is better than others, but the Europeans invest heavily, so they get equal treatment. I saw four or five acts before I heard anyone sing, so you get the picture. Of course it doesn’t help that no one has ever really defined what ‘world music’ really is, so acts having a slow go of it in their traditional genre might try to market themselves as ‘world music’ for better results. This might be the case with Crooked Still, an American bluegrass band at the show. Bluegrass is a pretty solid genre on its own, so I suspect a conscious marketing maneuver and/or a conscious effort to include North Americans in the mix. That’s fair, I guess, though the lines get fuzzy with all the ‘slash’ bands that occupy the turf, that is, US/Mexico/India/Morocco/whereverstan. There are many ex-pat foreigners in the world-music field, i.e. Africans in Paris, Mexicans in the US, Indians in the UK, etc. This not only gives them an English-speaking connection to their audience, but also an adaptation in taste, whether conscious or not. World music is like world food, derived from its country of origin(s), yet somehow different, often better. I’ve certainly had South American food and Asian food in the original and its hybrid forms. They’re both legitimate, as long as it doesn’t come out of a can. You can’t claim that Chinese food in the US is unauthentic when they use broccoli, if the cooks and the customers are both Chinese in the vast majority. To adhere to rigid rules would be the unauthentic path. Of course the ‘tsunami special’ and the ‘Rambo favorite’ on a Thai food menu is another question.

So a mostly-female group called ‘Pistolera’ finally got the show rockin’ with some Mexican-style rock-and-polka that kicked some surprisingly real ass, especially considering the matronly appearance of the chief protagonists in their vintage clothes and scarce make-up. If they had a looker like Lila Downs out front, they’d have real potential as some novelty rancheras. Mexican corridas are usually sung by men, leaving women the slow stuff and booty-twitching. It’s a shame, but sex, and its illusions and false promises, sells. It wasn’t a big deal back when you’d listen to a faceless radio, but these days you got to look and sound, not just good, but USDA prime rib good. It’s disgusting. I’d like to think music is better than that, but much of it really isn’t. Problem was, you could barely get in to see the little rancheritas because of the cluster-flock at the downstairs stage, so I almost missed some rockin’ good stuff. A Senegalese band got things hopping upstairs, good enough to maybe make me do a detour on my upcoming West African trip. The leader himself was about seven feet tall and it seems they could all do little flip-up tricks with their crotches. I looked for signs of drooping wood with no luck, so the effect may have been genuine. They were followed by the obligatory Saharan blues group Toumast, which was playing a bit crippled without their female signer, so I’ll fudge my faint praise. Suffice it to say that Grunge has got its Cobain and reggae its Marley; you can’t expect equal brilliance from every corner. It’s still good, and got the Senegalese hopping on the floor, so that speaks well. Bands usually play their set then head for their bottles and pipes first thing, not the dance floor. I can’t blame ‘em. Other than that the venerable 84-year-old Dominican Puerto Plata, after the city of the same name, played some nice Caribbean rhythms, again enough for me to revisit there at some point.

For better or worse I don’t have any songs stuck in my head the morning after GlobalFest, for what that’s worth. Like love, the best music sticks in your head the next day. I hate to reduce music to that, but that’s what ‘hooks’ are, the words and music still playing in your head, begging you to buy them. A lot of ‘world music’ doesn’t have that, but some does. It’s not about language. It’s about a minor key making you sad, and a major key picking you back up, all done with style and grace, and a catchy rhythm getting you up on your feet whether you like it or not. The first revelation with my forays into world music was that the lyrics really don’t matter that much, not always, certainly. When they’re stellar, then so much the better. They’re usually not. That’s writing. So ‘world music’ limps on, a million musicians in search of a genre. Its promoters don’t help much, with their quirkiness and laughable invocations of authenticity and ‘indigenous.’ Everybody’s got their little marketing schtick, whether it’s Putumayo, Real Guide, or Sublime Frequencies, and certainly there are good musicologists doing good work, but I can’t help but think people are making something overly complex out of something really very simple, i.e. the boogie factor.

So it wasn’t Timbuktu, but it wasn’t bad. I’m still holding out hope for some other ‘festival in the desert’. Essouk is still possible. I’ll head straight to Gao and see what’s shaking. If the homies say “let’s go,” then I just might. I WILL make it to Segou, but that’s different, jungle and urban music, whatever, but not desert. This is the most complicated trip I’ve ever planned. It not only requires a visa, but a yellow fever shot, and a hotel reservation, and countless festival searches. At least I got a family to stay with in Segou. That’ll be good, and cheap. Cheap country doesn’t mean cheap hotels, after all. I’ll just hope for the best, and try to groove on the music. At least I called off the week in Norway (a week of cold and darkness, great idea!). One night in Reykjavik was plenty. At least my feet won’t be cold in Mali. I’ve got fifty countries down and a hundred fifty to go. Planes crisscross the runways at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle international airport like they don’t know where they’re going, but I do. Timbuktu or bust! And as the plane touches down in Bamako, I knew, just as I expected, that ‘this is not Kansas anymore’. For better or worse, this is the real thing, warts and all.

Stuck Inside of Flagstaff with the Sahara (or is it Mississippi?) Blues Again

It’s almost like some Dylan song, except that Mobile probably ain’t that bad, nor Memphis that great, probably not that much difference really, except that Mobile’s got a little piece of the gulf, which is really nice to break up the monotony of the Deep South until it washes up into your yard. I doubt that Dylan’s ever been east of Highway 61 and south of I-40 anyway, except for the Rolling Thunder Revue back in ’75, doin’ some tunes for us homies, he and McGuinn and Kinky and T-Bone and Allen G. and Joan, like some kind of East Coast Kool-Aid pH test for the rest of us, better late than never. Dylan’s one of my all-time pop heroes, he and Costello and Carabao and Cobain, the best R&R of each of the preceding four decades. The best pop music of this decade has yet to be determined. Einstein, Jesus, and Plato occupy another plateau. Dylan and I share the same birthday, if not exactly the same religion. He said things that may never have been said otherwise. Saharan blues? Yeah, that’s good, too. That’s why I’m going to Mali. There’s probably more good music there per capita than any country in the world, not just the traditional griot style of the sub-Saharan heart of darkness, but a new northern style fostered by the Tuaregs, the ‘blue people’ of the desert. Think deep blue indigo. Think guitars instead of guns. Think music instead of jihad. Talking Timbuktu? Talk Tinariwen.

Tinariwen is the best example of the new ‘Desert Blues’. I first heard them on a sample CD from the WOMEX festival last year in Sevilla, though they’ve played a few WOMAD’s in the last few years, and have been instrumental, pun intended, in making the Festival au Desert outside Timbuktu famous. I knew none of this, though, when I got focused on that 3-song sample CD only a little over a year ago. It immediately became my favorite, best of the ten or so I culled from the stack, as I lightened my load in Rabat. Three months ago they opened for the Rolling Stones in Dublin. It’s nice to be right. A blitzkrieg tour of small venues in the US ensued, maybe the last time you’ll be able to see them like that. I tried to see if we could get them here in Flagstaff, but too little too late. Hard to believe they actually played here for a handful of passersby at NAU a year or two ago. Yup, really. Turns out they’re best friends with the local Navajo band Black Fire, even counting them among their influences on their official website. Berta Benally says they met back at the Festival at Essakane outside Timbuktu, and have been fast friends ever since. That’s a great album from the 2004 festival, including such luminaries as Ali Farka Toure’ and Robert Plant, also. The festival is on the verge of getting too big for its limited infrastructure now, and others have imitated its success. Tinariwen themselves sponsor one at Essouk near Kidal, though their manager tells me it’s not being publicized this year due to violence in the region, and will likely be a very “low-key affair.” There’s an off-chance I might even make it there in time, though hedging my bets. It’s too expensive to make Essakane with the early January holiday rush still in effect. I WILL make it to the Festival at Segou, down south near Bamako. It’ll be more the traditional griot style of Malian music, as opposed to the more free-range Tuareg style.

Ali Farka Toure’ lies somewhere between the two, resting in peace, while his presumably oldest son ‘Vieux’ carries on the musical tradition with his half-Western band. They say that “the blues” can be traced to a single village in Mali, but I doubt it. They say lots of things. If it could, though, Ali Farka’s hometown of Niafunke’ would certainly seem appropriate. Since his electrifying success, much speculation has arisen about whether the blues was imported from Mali to the US or vice-versa, and the argument quickly becomes circular, with turn-of-last-century early blues musicians obviously retaining some African influence only a few generations removed and turn-of-this-century Mali musicians obviously influenced by an avalanche of American music that has swept the globe for a hundred years, not just from the US, mind you, but also the Caribbean exerting strong influence. The question quickly becomes one of definition. “Blues” by definition is an American medium, and consists of several different styles, both rural and urban, and that doesn’t even include jazz, gospel, and soul. Malian music is similarly diverse. To try to find the “blues gene” or get self-righteous about who discovered what in an essentially collaborative medium is a bit feudal and futile, especially considering the dispersive methods of the slave trade and the lack of proper record-keeping. Black people of the African diaspora have much in common to be explored and shared, notwithstanding the significant differences between cultures within the African continent itself. Let the scientists and doctors quibble over the details.

The origins of the new ‘Sahara Blues’ seem a little less mysterious, despite Robert Plant’s description of it as “a drop in a very old bucket.” For one thing, Tuaregs aren’t even black. They didn’t invent the blues, nor do they share much culturally or historically with black Malians, with whom they have frequently struggled. Music is better than all that, and obviously ‘Saharan Blues’ has borrowed much from Ali Farka in addition to Arabic styles from the north. When Ali Farka first heard of the Festival au Desert, he immediately asked to play. The rest is history. Music has been a powerful unifying factor between North and South in Mali, bridging the vast cultural gap between the Saharan north and the sub-Saharan south. Uprisings are frequent in the region and indeed, Tinariwen themselves met and coalesced in one of Muammar Gaddafi’s training camps in the 80’s. Now they carry guitars. Music can heal, both internally and externally. One of Tinariwen’s most competent competitors these days, Etran Finatawa, from the same region but across the border in Niger, is composed not only of Tuaregs but their traditional enemies, the Wodaabe, a picturesque group of non-Muslim Fulani. The Tuareg roots lie with the Semitic north. The Fulani roots lie with the Niger-Congo South. They meet where the Sahel meets the Sahara, where camels and goats meet horses and cattle. Though far from the Islamic heartland in Arabia, this is where the world’s most prominent jihads have occurred, mostly by the Fulani, mediating culture and religion between the Islamic/Semitic north and the tribal/animist south. The fact that their traditional herding lands were being heavily encroached upon was probably a contributing cause. Music is better than all that. It may not be the universal language nor the universal religion, but then again, maybe it is.