Artist

Tinariwen

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There is a depth of feeling in Tinariwen’s music that is universal. But to really understand the
message of their songs, you need to understand where they’re from. 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 this feeling of longing: a
sound that critics have called “desert blues”.
Today, Tinariwen are a multi-generational, Grammy-winning band who count among their fans
some of the biggest names in Western music. But 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”.

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