Tinariwen – Imidiwan

A look back at British and American music shows you that the best stuff often comes from hardship and rebellion. From the blues of the fifties, the mod of the sixties, the punk of the seventies and the rave culture of the eighties, the most energizing and exciting music often comes from the desire to get up off your arse and stick one to the man.So while Carnaby Street punks were getting their photos taken with tourists in 1979, Taghreft Tinariwen (meaning ‘group of the desert’) were meeting in one of Colonel Ghadaffi’s Libyan military refugee training camps. And while we were lost in a drug fuelled smiley acid house rebellion in the early 90s, the Tinariwen we know today was forming its own desert blues style at the post-battle firesides of the Saharan rebellion in Mali. Guitars in hand, guns on their backs, this really is music from the rough side of town.Led by original member Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, Tinariwen are a seven-piece of Tueareg poet-musicians that create ragged, hypnotic, droning desert blues - the beat of the best West African music with the soul of Hendrix. The rhythms are traditional, but the guitars add a western feel rare to genuine African music, which this certainly is. Yet this is rocky and rhythmic, funky yet alien: the massed guitars and jagged yet beautiful vocals transcending the typical Guardian reading, coffee table adorning African sound many see little understanding in. This is raw, hardcore world music (how about worldcore ”“ I haven’t made a musical genre up all week).Imidiwan is the group’s fourth album, following 2007's highly acclaimed Aman Iman and the earlier (and even more highly acclaimed) Amassakoul. They’ve won a stack of accolades and will win a stack more, but their lack of desire to move away from the sound that defines them is laudable. Essentially, if you’ve heard them before, don’t expect any departures from the norm. If you haven’t come across Tinariwen before, this is a good a place to start as any. And you should start, really.Of course, this being traditional Malian desert music, there’s not much there for the lyrical purists (unless you happen to speak the rather complex Tamashek) ”“ I’m afraid you’ll have to use your imagination. But that shouldn’t be too difficult: this is music from a forgotten nation, of exile and tragedy, of trying to exist together in a modern world so far from their roots. Sit back, close your eyes, and indulge yourself. 82%Tinariwen Official Website