Exclusive – Grammy award winning Tinariwen share unreleased West African grooves
Superstars of world music set to reissue two albums with unheard bonus tracks
Tinariwen are a multi-generational, Grammy-winning band who count among their fans some of the biggest names in Western music. They’ve appeared at Coachella, Glastonbury, WOMAD, Denmark’s Roskilde and Japan’s Fuji Rock; performed live on The Colbert Report and Later With Jools Holland; and played at the FIFA World Cup Kick-off Concert in South Africa in 2010 and count Thom Yorke and Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers as fans. Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant even travelled to Festival au Désert in Mali to witness Tinariwen playing on home turf. “I felt this was the music I’d been looking for all my life,” he said.
To celebrate the reissue of two Tinariwen albums via Wedge Records on March 25 – The Radio Tisdas Sessions and Amassakoul – the band have kindly let Juno Daily exclusively share the visualiser video to the previously unreleased ‘Ham Tingaghin Ane Yallah’., which features as a bonus track on The Radio Tisdas Sessions.
You can trace their journey back to the late 1970s, where the group’s founding father Ibrahim Ag Alhabib – the son of a Tuareg rebel who had witnessed his father’s execution at the hands of the Malian government – built his own guitar using a tin can, a stick and a bicycle brake wire and taught himself to play. Drifting through towns and refugee camps in search of work, he met fellow Tuareg musicians, and around campfires they would write songs which they would play at parties or social gatherings. People called them Kel Tinariwen, which translates from their native Tamashek to “People of the Deserts” or “The Desert Boys”.
It is through music, not conflict, that Tinariwen chose to bring their message to the world. Following a decade in which their music was exchanged by hand on dubbed cassettes, in 2001 came their first commercially released album –The Radio Tisdas Sessions – with this reissue marking its 20th anniversary. The Radio Tisdas Sessions was recorded in Kidal at a local Tamashek-language radio station, which wasn’t the easiest job, as the studio was powered by solar panels, and the electricity kept cutting out – although the mixing, at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, went somewhat more smoothly.
The album features songs from Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, Kedou Ag Ossad, Foy Foy and Mohamed Ag Itlal aka ‘Japonais’, who passed away on February 14th 2021. Tinariwen’s fame was spreading – and following the album’s release they embarked on their first international tour.
Amassakoul, released in 2004 and recorded at Studio Bogolan in Bamako, was made by a band in which four of the six players were newcomers and represented a shift to a more produced, intricate sound.
Pre-order your copies of The Radio Tisdas Sessions and Amassakoul on vinyl or CD here, along with a host of other releases by the band.