Tinariwen
with special guests Zun Zun Egui
(Thu 29th Oct 2009 / 7pm / £18 adv)
One of the great African rock bands returns to Bristol to perform their scintillating live show in support of a new album - and that is something to get hot about. Rebel music to leave home for. Tinariwen are up there with bands as diverse as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Mars Volta, Sigur Ros, Fleetwood Mac and The Doors as one of the most distinctive rock bands in the world. They happen to be the most fluid of them all, making nightfall trance desert rock that is exhilarating in its assured earthiness and liquid outer-worldliness. They come with a history and endorsements like no other but these are equalled by their incendiary live reputation.
Tinariwen are a collective of Touareg nomads from the Saharan desert led by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, a bona fide rock star with a mesmerising guitar style. They are icons of freedom and resistance among their own people. Their music is widescreen to the point of limitlessness, its circular blues riffs, call-and-response-vocals and hypnotic drones seemingly inseparable from the sweeping desert landscapes of the Sahara. They can justifiably claim to be one of the biggest names in world music right now but their appeal stretches far beyond the world music community - for Tinariwen are a guitar band, formed in the 70s inspired by Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and with the riffs to prove it, while their back-story, an epic tale of suppression and rebellion set in the expanses of the Sahara, has been described as “the most rock 'n' roll of them all” (The Irish Times).
The thirty-year musical and social history of Tinariwen is a fascinating and inspiring tale. The band grew from a core of Touareg musicians who had grown up in the refugee camps near the Malian border in Algeria following the suppression of the Touareg people by the new independent Malian government in the early 1960’s and steadily built their reputation in and around the Sahara desert. By the end of the 1990’s Tinariwen’s reputation had begun to spread beyond their Saharan stronghold - in 1999 the band played a few gigs in France and in 2001 they played at the first ‘Festival in the Desert’ in Mali where they were heralded as the stars of the show and set out on the path that would see them celebrated around the world. Now they are loved by the great and the good and win awards, but you can see why when you experience their live show – their raw but silky music chimes with our times, it is dreamy but funky, local but worldwide. It references the past but inspires the future.
The group's steady ascent has seen them playing in over 700 concerts in Europe as well as releasing four albums in the west, 'The Radio Tisdas Sessions' (2001), 'Amassakoul' (2004), 'Aman Iman' (2007) and now 'Imidiwan'. This latest offering sees them return to their roots and recapture the raw desert sound of their early recordings. Lo’Jo’s French sound engineer, Jean-Paul Romann, who had worked with Justin Adams on ‘The Radio Tisdas Sessions’ eight years previously, was recruited to produce the album. He arrived with a studio in a suitcase, which was set up in a rented adobe house in the middle of Ibrahim's home village, and powered by a chugging generator. The sessions proceeding slowly, surely, in pace with the rhythm of life in that remote corner of Africa. There were free concerts for the local populace in the village square, and recording sessions far out in the bush. There were solitary nights around the fire, under the stars, and parties. The music that resulted is ultra-vivid and their finest work to date. Live on stage it takes on a extra dimension.
Tinariwen are a collective of Touareg nomads from the Saharan desert led by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, a bona fide rock star with a mesmerising guitar style. They are icons of freedom and resistance among their own people. Their music is widescreen to the point of limitlessness, its circular blues riffs, call-and-response-vocals and hypnotic drones seemingly inseparable from the sweeping desert landscapes of the Sahara. They can justifiably claim to be one of the biggest names in world music right now but their appeal stretches far beyond the world music community - for Tinariwen are a guitar band, formed in the 70s inspired by Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and with the riffs to prove it, while their back-story, an epic tale of suppression and rebellion set in the expanses of the Sahara, has been described as “the most rock 'n' roll of them all” (The Irish Times).
The thirty-year musical and social history of Tinariwen is a fascinating and inspiring tale. The band grew from a core of Touareg musicians who had grown up in the refugee camps near the Malian border in Algeria following the suppression of the Touareg people by the new independent Malian government in the early 1960’s and steadily built their reputation in and around the Sahara desert. By the end of the 1990’s Tinariwen’s reputation had begun to spread beyond their Saharan stronghold - in 1999 the band played a few gigs in France and in 2001 they played at the first ‘Festival in the Desert’ in Mali where they were heralded as the stars of the show and set out on the path that would see them celebrated around the world. Now they are loved by the great and the good and win awards, but you can see why when you experience their live show – their raw but silky music chimes with our times, it is dreamy but funky, local but worldwide. It references the past but inspires the future.
The group's steady ascent has seen them playing in over 700 concerts in Europe as well as releasing four albums in the west, 'The Radio Tisdas Sessions' (2001), 'Amassakoul' (2004), 'Aman Iman' (2007) and now 'Imidiwan'. This latest offering sees them return to their roots and recapture the raw desert sound of their early recordings. Lo’Jo’s French sound engineer, Jean-Paul Romann, who had worked with Justin Adams on ‘The Radio Tisdas Sessions’ eight years previously, was recruited to produce the album. He arrived with a studio in a suitcase, which was set up in a rented adobe house in the middle of Ibrahim's home village, and powered by a chugging generator. The sessions proceeding slowly, surely, in pace with the rhythm of life in that remote corner of Africa. There were free concerts for the local populace in the village square, and recording sessions far out in the bush. There were solitary nights around the fire, under the stars, and parties. The music that resulted is ultra-vivid and their finest work to date. Live on stage it takes on a extra dimension.