Tinariwen @ Somerset House
Tinariwen traveled a long way to reach their July 13th show at Somerset House in London. The band’s origins can be traced back to when member Ibrahim Ag Alhabib watched his father being executed at four years old by the Malian government. Ibrahim and his father were Tuareg, members of a Berber ethnic group whose semi-nomadic lifestyle has frequently brought it into conflict with governments that impose national borders on the vast Sahara. Ibrahim spent his youth bouncing between refugee camps and desert villages (and a few jails) across northern Africa; he was only able to satisfy his budding musicianship by fashioning makeshift guitars out of discarded junk. In time, Ibrahim acquired a proper electric guitar, a group of like-minded musicians, and a substantial local following.
Tinariwen’s lyrics – centered on a yearning for freedom and meaning – resonated with a generation displaced by military conflict and economic upheaval in Mali. When war in Mali subsided in the 90s, the members of Tinariwen decided to fully dedicate themselves to music. By the 2000s, they were successfully navigating the absurdities of the Western music industry and receiving global recognition.
For an hour and a half, the band employed jittery guitar solos and galloping polyrhythms to teleport the Somerset House crowd from the gloomy banks of the Thames to the sun-scorched Sahara. They were even so kind as to welcome the crowd to the new land, saying “welcome to the Sahara… do you know the Sahara?”.
Photos by Saloni Jaisingh
Three members traded off frontman responsibilities through the set, with the rest of the members taking to the drums, acting as hype-men, and singing backup. This diversity within the lineup suited the band well as each arrangement explored a different aspect of their sound.
Tinariwen (which translates to ‘deserts’) are considered the fathers of the ‘desert blues’. Their music certainly shares characteristics with what would traditionally be called ‘the blues’, such as call-and-response structures in addition to pentatonic guitar licks. The western ear might find other reference points in funk, psych rock, and even flamenco, but in practice the music is something extraordinary.
Their sound feels both foreign and familiar. It harkens back to the strange (and tragic) circumstances that first gave birth to the blues. From the calls to prayer of the Sahel, across the Atlantic to the field hollers of the plantation, to the lonely fingerpicking of the Jim Crow era, through the electrification of the 60s counterculture, to the funk of the early neoliberal period, and now in the Saharan rock of Mali, the appeal of this music has always been deeply rooted in the human spirit.
In a literal, physical way, each audience member explored this freedom. Some held up Berber flags, some swayed, some danced with their friends. And all the while, when the crowd got lost in the music, Tinariwen’s backup singers were there to coax its overenthusiastic claps back onto the beat.
