Some people have commented that Tinariwen have always been a country band, albeit a North African take on that most North American of genres. That idea is magnified on new album Amatssou, which finds the Tuareg band’s trademark snaking guitar lines and hypnotic rhythms blending seamlessly with pedal steel, piano and strings from guest musicians including Daniel Lanois, the embellished arrangements lending the songs an epic, universal application.

Full of poetic allegory, the lyrics call for unity and freedom. There are songs of struggle and resistance with oblique references to the recent desperate political upheavals in Mali and the increasing power of the Salafists. “Dear brothers all rest, all leisure will always be far from reach unless your homeland is liberated and all the elders can live there in dignity,” Ibrahim Ag Alhabib sings on ‘Arajghiyine.’ The album’s title Amatssou is Tamashek for ‘Beyond The Fear’ and it fits - Tinariwen have always been characterised by their fearlessness - and as Bob Dylan once said, the power of rock’n’roll is that it makes us “oblivious to the fear” as the music gives us the strength and resilience to confront adversity.

In the two decades since Tinariwen emerged from their base in the African desert to tour the globe, they have got to know many renowned country, folk, and rock musicians from the USA including Kurt Vile, Stephen O'Malley, Jack White, and Wilco. Tuareg nomads and cowboy drifters. Camel trains and mustang horses. The timeless horizon of the endless Sahara and the wild frontier of the Old West - several thousand miles of ocean may divide the desert blues of Tinariwen and the authentic country music of rural America but the links are as palpable as they are romantic.

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl Tracklist:
A1. Kek Alghalm
A2. Tenere Den
A3. Arajghiyine
A4. Tidjit
A5. Jayche Atarak
B1. Imidiwan Mahitinam
B2. Ezlan
B3. Anemouhagh
B4. Iket Adjen
B5. Nak Idnizdjam

CD Tracklist:
1.  Kek Alghalm
2.  Tenere Den
3.  Arajghiyine
4.  Imzad (Interlude)
5.  Tidjit
6.  Jayche Atarak
7.  Imidiwan Mahitinam
8.  Imzad 2 (Interlude)
9.  Ezlan
10.  Anemouhagh
11.  Iket Adjen
12.  Nak Idnizdjam
13.  Tinde (Outro)

The 20th Anniversary edition of Tinariwen’s first studio album The Radio Tisdas Sessions has been remastered and repackaged with a bonus unreleased bonus track, exclusive photos and brand-new liner notes.

The Radio Tisdas Sessions feature songs from Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, Kedou Ag Ossad, Mohamed Ag Itlal aka ‘Japonais' who passed away on February 14th 2021, and Foy Foy.

Tinariwen are Tuaregs, children of a nomadic Berber tribe who have roamed the Saharan desert for thousands of years. Over recent centuries, colonialism has seen the Tuareg’s ancestral territory partitioned into distinct countries - Mali, Algeria, Libya, Niger. This drawing of borders has turned the Tuareg into ishumar, a displaced people in search of a homeland lost to them. Tinariwen’s music – a blend of West African traditional music and electrified rock’n’roll – speaks directly to this feeling of longing: a sound that critics have called “desert blues”.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Le Chant Des Fauves
A2 Nar Djenetbouba

Side B
B1 Imidiwaren
B2 Zin Es Gourmeden

Side C
C1 Afours Afours (5:27)
C2 Tessalit (3:58)
C3 Kedou Kedou (6:13)

Side D
D1 Mataraden Anexan
D2 Bismillah
D3 Tessalit - Live At Festival Au Desert - Tin-essako
D4 Ham Tinahghin Ane Yallah (Bonus Unreleased)

Tinariwen’s breakthrough album originally released in 2004, now remastered and repackaged with a bonus unreleased track, exclusive photos and brand-new liner notes.  Amassakoul features songs from Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni, Touhami Ag Alhassane.

Tinariwen are Tuaregs, children of a nomadic Berber tribe who have roamed the Saharan desert for thousands of years. Over recent centuries, colonialism has seen the Tuareg’s ancestral territory partitioned into distinct countries - Mali, Algeria, Libya, Niger. This drawing of borders has turned the Tuareg into ishumar, a displaced people in search of a homeland lost to them. Tinariwen’s music – a blend of West African traditional music and electrified rock’n’roll – speaks directly to this feeling of longing: a sound that critics have called “desert blues”.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
A1 Amassakoul’n’ténéré
A2 Oualahila Ar Tesninam
A3 Chatma

Side B
B1 Arawan
B2 Chet Boghassa
B3 Amidinin

Side C
C1 Ténéré Daféo Nikchan
C2 Aldhechen Manin
C3 Alkhar Dessouf

Side D
D1 Eh Massina Sintadoben
D2 Assoul
D3 Taskiwt Tadjat (Bonus Track Unreleased)

The best Tinariwen album hasn’t been recorded yet. Perhaps it never will be. Because the best Tinariwen music isn’t the music they perform in front of microphones. It’s the music they play at night around the fire, back in their own country, amongst themselves and at their own pace. Having eaten, and drunk their tea, the men bring out their guitars, chat, remember old songs and let the music come. In those moments, the music can become like the fire, free, magical and impossible to stuff into a box. It rises up like a shower of sparks or a state of grace, without premeditation; the momentary manifestation of a friendship, a community, an environment, a history; the revelatory connection with something that belongs only to them, and goes beyond them. Their discography stretching out over the last 17 years, all the tours and the international recognition have changed nothing: Tinariwen are still a desert band, only certain aspects of which the western music industry can ever hope to capture and present. Tinariwen existed long before any of their albums were recorded, and they still exist quite distinct from their discographic dimension. So, the best Tinariwen album doesn’t exist. But it’s still worth trying to go and find it.

The story of Amadjar, the ninth Tinariwen album, begins at the end of October 2018, at the Taragalte Festival of nomadic cultures in the Moroccan Sahara. After a concert and a sandstorm, Tinariwen hit the road and head for Mauritania, via southern Morocco, Western Sahara and the Atlantic coast. The destination is important (the band have to set up and record their album there, and hook up with the singer Noura Mint Seymali), but no more so than the journey itself. Tinariwen are joined by their French production team, who arrive in old camper van that’s been converted into a makeshift studio. The journey to Nouakchott, capital of Mauritania, takes a dozen days or so. Every evening, the caravan stops to set up camp and the members of Tinariwen get to work under the stars – a whole lot better than being in a studio after all – to prepare for the recording, talking things through, letting their guitar motifs, thoughts and long buried songs come. Then, during a final camp in the desert around Nouakchott that lasts about fifteen days, to an audience of scorpions, the band record their songs under large tent. In a few live takes, without headphones or effects. The Mauritanian griotte Noura Mint Seymali and her guitarist husband, Jeiche Ould Chigaly, come to throw their musical tradition on the embers lit by Tinariwen – the curling vocals of Noura Mint Seymali on the song ‘Amalouna’ will become a highlight.

This nomadic album, recorded in a natural setting, is as close as you can get to Tinariwen. And also, therefore, to the idea that things can evolve: bassist Eyadou plays a lot of acoustic guitar; percussionist Said tries his hand at new instruments; Abdallah exhumes songs that he’s never played on stage with Tinariwen. And that violin that appears on several songs and reminds you of the traditional imzad? It’s actually played by Warren Ellis. The violinist in Nick Cave’s band is one of several western guests on the album. We also hear the mandolin and charango of Micah Nelson (son of the country music giant Willie Nelson, and Neil Young’s guitarist), and the guitars of Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O)))), Cass McCombs and Rodolphe Burger. The album is mixed by Jack White’s buddy Joshua Vance Smith.

In the end, Amadjar tells the story of several journeys: the one undertaken to prepare the album, and the one that Tinariwen take between two worlds, theirs and ours, with that constant need to pass from one to the other before coming back to the roots. “I’m in a complete solitude, where thoughts frighten me, and lost in their midst I arose and noticed that I was thirsty and wanted water,” sings Ibrahim on ‘Ténéré Maloulat’, the first song on the album. A return to the source of Tamashek poetry. In the middle of other more political songs, through always desolate, these words express deep distress and survival, but also movement. Amadjar means ‘the unknown visitor’ in Tamashek, the one who seeks hospitality and who’s condemned to an inner exile, within a territory or within himself; just like the members of Tinariwen, who feel at home on the journey, around the fire with a few immutable songs. The best Tinariwen album will never be. But Amadjar is more essential than all the others. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Patrick says: Desert rock superstars Tinariwen's ninth LP is the closest the tuareg troop have come to capturing their live sound in the studio, largely because "Amadjar" was conceived, composed and recorded across a trail of temporary studios during a North African road trip.

TRACK LISTING

1 Tenere Maloulat
2 Zawal
3 Amalouna
4 Taqkal Tarha
5 Anina
6 Madjam Mahilkamen
7 Takount
8 Iklam Dglour
9 Kel Tinawen
10 Itous Ohar
11 Mhadjar Yassouf Idjan
12 Wartilla
13 Lalla

’Live In Paris, Oukis N’Asuf’ was recorded at a very special concert at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris on Saturday 13th December 2014 and features the band performing alongside 75-year-old ‘grand dame’ of Tamashek culture Lalla Badi.

The album’s title, ‘Oukis N’Asuf’, which, translated literally, means to take away, forget or get over heart-ache and longing. Asuf - the longing of the soul - conjures up the feeling of separation from the Touareg camp, the physical environment of the desert, its emptiness, its blackness, and its spirits.

A hypnotic evening of guitar and tindé (small mortar drum covered by a taut goatskin) normally reserved for more in intimate spaces - around a fire in the desert in southern Algeria perhaps, or in the yard of a house somewhere in the northern Mali.

Badi, who remains the queen of tindé (a word that denotes both an instrument played exclusively by women, and a poetic repertoire which is sung at ceremonies and special occasions), is originally from Timiaoune in the far south of the Algerian Sahara and now lives in Tamanrasset.

She became a mentor to the Touareg in the 1970s, thanks both to her mastery of this musical genre and her commitment to the Touareg cause. Back then she took in the ishumars (unemployed vagrants), those Touareg who had set off to Libya in search of a better life.

Like them, the future members of Tinariwen also fled repression and the crippling droughts of northern Mali in those dark years, stopping off in Algeria along the way. Lalla Badi took them under her wing, became like a mother to them, a big sister, an accomplice and the performance in Paris, her first show in France in over thirty years, gave Tinarwen the opportunity to show their respect and gratitude.