Entertainment | Music
Guitar boys from the Sahara desert
The Saharan band Tinariwen talk about their beginnings in exile and return to their roots
- By David Honigmann, Financial Times
- Published: 00:00 November 6, 2009
- Several Tuareg bands have taken shape in the wake of the success Kel Tinariwen has reaped in international circles
- Image Credit: Supplied
Everything revolves around tea. Ebrahim Ag Alhabib, his wiry hair greying now that he has turned 50, is squatting on his haunches, watching a red enamel kettle simmer and hiss on a hotplate.
When the brew is ready, it is poured into thumb-deep glasses, the kettle raised high so that the liquid pours out in a long brown stream. This is Tuareg tea, heavily sweetened, strong and dark. When the tea is drunk, we can begin.
Alhabib fronts the band Tinariwen, the originators of the gritty electric desert blues known to its nomadic practitioners as "guitar". Their fourth album, Imidiwan: Companions, was released earlier this year coinciding with their appearance at the Glastonbury Festival.
Tinariwen's members are Tuaregs, from the Adagh region of northern Mali. The group was born in exile, in the Algerian desert, during the Tuaregs' long estrangement from the Malian state, which began in 1963 and only really ended in the 1990s.
Alhabib became the master of the home-made guitar: He had been making them out of plastic water cans and sticks since the age of 4. He teamed up with another Tuareg, Inteyeden Ag Ablil. "We played together and songs started to come." Both were 19 and had been in exile in Algeria since the first uprising, during which the Malian army had killed Alhabib's father.
They took the name Kel Tinariwen, meaning "boys of the desert". Others drifted into their orbit, including Hassan Ag Touhami and Ablil's brother Diarra. "There were no instruments but lots of people wanted to play with us and sing."
Things became more formalised in 1985, at the guerrilla Camp 2 Mars near Tripoli, where Colonel Gaddafi had assembled the Tuareg fighters, with the women and children sequestered in a nearby village.
"We were designated musicians, so we didn't have to fight." Instead, Tinariwen recorded songs into a cassette player, to be duplicated and passed from hand to hand in the desert. "There were lots of songs about exile, about living sans papiers, sans cartes d'identité, urging people not to forget their roots."
In the camps, Alhabib and his fellows listened to a diet of Moroccan 1970s classics and Western sounds: "Jimi Hendrix, Marley, Dylan, James Brown. Santana later and Dire Straits. And a lot of Bollywood. But none of that is in the songs directly. When I make a new song it comes from me. It comes naturally, like breathing."
Trouble in the region flared up again in 1990, and the musicians turned briefly into fighters. In 1992 an uneasy peace was agreed and Tinariwen returned to their homes in the desert. "When we started, there were no other bands, so everyone who played guitar said they were in Tinariwen. Anyone who turned up was in the band. And there were many girls." The women's high, sharp ululation cuts across the low growl of guitar. Ablil fell ill and died in 1994 but the band continued.
A decade later, they played at the Festival in the Desert, an annual musical gathering held near Timbuktu, the first time their music came to wider attention. After that, their rise was rapid. In 2001, they made their European debut at the Womad world music festival, playing late at night in a small tent, luring in the handful of festivalgoers not watching the Skatalites.
Over the years, Tinariwen have steadily built their following in Europe, to the point where they are now a big draw at Womad and similar festivals. As Andy Morgan, their manager, says, they are probably better known in England than in southern Mali.
"We get no coverage on TV," Alhabib says. "That's reserved for the Bambara and the Manding [the ethnic groups whose music forms Mali's mainstream]."
The older generation has settled down. When not on tour, Alhabib says he lives "well but simply. I have a house in Tessalit and a garden. I like to be with my friends and to help them."
Several other Tuareg bands have now emerged, many built around Tinariwen alumni. "For me," Alhabib says, "it's good. When I was young, we had no way of expressing ourselves. There were old traditional singers but it wasn't something for a young person to do. Now, every band playing guitar is a continuation of Tinariwen. I can hear the same licks."
Given his eagerness to cultivate his garden and his unpredictability touring might be a chore. But he says not. "It's a job, sure. But I am 100 per cent a musician now. If you took my guitar away, it would feel like being in prison."
Tinariwen have now reconciled themselves to concert halls with seated audiences. They have played some magnificent concerts in these settings, notably a fiery, tight set in Salisbury last year that ended with Alhabib collapsing on stage. But the outdoors feels like their natural home. Alhabib agrees. "I don't feel free in a room. I like festivals - they feel almost like the desert. Almost."
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