Aman Iman

Tinariwen are hardly newcomers to the Malian music scene, celebrating as they are their 25th year together. Yet, for many, this third international release marks the coming of age for the seven-person band. The group, claims record producer and guitarist Justin Adams, “has become more muscular and focused” since 2004, partly, he writes in the sleeve notes, thanks to the extensive global touring. The fact that they remain rooted in their remote town of Kidal, a ten-hour drive north of Gao, makes each trip an arduous one – the February concert I witnessed in the Malian town of Ségou found them jaded and uninspired.

Fortunately, neither of these features permeates into “Aman Iman”. The album is made up of 12 of the 23 songs recorded last February in a ten-day blitzkrieg of the mythical Bogolan Studios in Bamako. That’s 1,600 kilometres south of Kidal. The rich texture in all the songs is largely the result of the extra guitars and the wonderfully crisp recording by Ben Findley (an adept of Real World) and fellow sound engineer Ibrahim Coulibaly. “Cler Achel” (I Spent the Day), “Toumast” (The People) and “Assouf” (Longing) are fine examples of the rippling power Tinariwen has acquired, partly thanks to the exchanges the musicians have had with the likes of Carlos Santana and, especially, Justin Adams.

The songs on the album have lyrics in Tamashek, and they are transcribed in the Tifinar alphabet the Tuaregs use. This is one of the oldest alphabets in the world and it is under threat today. Obviously, the printing of the lyrics is part of an engaged commitment by the musicians and their backers to preserve a heritage that has a global value recognised by UNESCO. Such militancy is part of the fabric of Tinariwen. Many of these songs are history lessons about the long and hard struggle of the Tuaregs to claim self-determination, or at least autonomy, from their Malian and Lybian rulers. The various episodes of their 44-year battle are recounted with a certain restraint and great poetry in ballads that have sometimes been written over 20 years ago. The group’s charismatic leader Ibrahim Ag Alhabib pencilled in most of them, but the two by Mohammed Ag Itlale, aka Japonais, give an extra, almost hypnotic, dimension to the album. Japonais is a discreet personality who is considered one of the greatest Tamashek poets. His shadowy aura is re-enforced by the fact that he refuses to join Tinariwen on their gruelling tours. “He’s a drinker,” writes Adams, “with a mercurial spirit who looks for all the world like a Kurosawa Samurai in indigo robes.”

There is a certain dichotomy between the loneliness of the desert, the sandswept blues it gives birth to, and the deep bonds the group has created in the 25 years together. This clan, or extended family, as Adams describes Tinariwen, has lived through death and tragedy (Alhabib’s father died in the conflict when he was four), and so pain is never far below the surface of their songs. Yet there is a durability and defiance that the music transmits, while the magnificent photographs elevate it to another level. Composed by Thomas Dorn, one of the world’s best visual specialists on African artists, they invite us into a world that is stark yet awash with colour, grainy yet pregnant with poetry, empty yet rippling with humanity and ghosts. The closing words of the final song, “Izarharn Tenere” (I Lived in the Desert), reflects this simple and barren surface that hides long roots - akin to the cactus:

“I heard the sound of the tindé*, the tindé of the spirits
It was the tindé of the spirit world, around which they paraded their camels
I took my show camel, fettered and rested for days
I departed deep in thought, following the hills
I stop suddenly, I listen. Nothing at all
Nothing but the wind whispering through the dry grass.”

February 2007

Daniel Brown

*The tindé is a traditional drum played by women. It is the core of Tuareg music.

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