Tinariwen - The Academy, Dublin

I am very prejudiced against the hippy drippy-style of dancing of some people – mostly women – during gigs by African bands. This dates back to seven or eight years ago when I saw a group of tribal dancers performing in St Georges Market in Belfast. Each dance and its significance was explained by a group member - some were performed to celebrate a birth, a wedding or a coming of age, others were to mourn a death or berate a turn of bad fortune. The musicians would then start up and the dancers in full tribal regalia would begin their highly stylised moves.
Meanwhile, infront of the stage, where the dancers and musicians were symbolically lamenting the death of child, a dozen or so women in tie-dye teeshirts and floaty skirts kicked off their moccasins and started twirling their hands, gyrating their hips and twisting their bodies in a free-from style of dance that they presumably thought of as 'ethnic'.
So when Tinariwen took to the stage last night in Dublin and started clunking at their guitars and battering their drums my heart sank as a few people tried to clap along and totally failed to find the rhythm - most guitar, bass and drum concerts follow a simple 4/4 beat, but this seemed to be in 6.5/11. By song three, however, things had settled into a slightly more clappable and danceable rhythmic pattern.
As opposed to the tribal group in St George's Market, Tinariwen were clearly keen to see their audience move, with various members swaying and clapping their hands out over the audience to help them get their rhythm.
Their songs are often played around a single droning guitar note with staccato guitar runs cutting across it, backed by bass, tribal drums and whole clatter of backing singers - although none of the females whose wails are so distinctive on Tinariwen's studio albums were on stage.
Tinariwan's main singer Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, although exotically dressed, was the only one not wearing flowing desert robes that covered the entire bodies and most of the band members'heads. He left the stage after the first two songs, which he sang, and the vocals were taken over by various other members of the group, until he reappeared for most of the rest of the set.
Tinariwen's music has been described as 'desert blues'. It has been argued that the blues, in the sense of American blues, evolved among the descendants of slaves in the American deep south. Musicologists have looked to tribal chants and wails to find the source of the blues.
In the case of Tinariwen the music has come home and they have taken American blues and adapted it to create their own unique style and punked it up a bit. It was Andy Kershaw who described Tinariwen as the closest thing he had ever seen live to the Clash.
Tinariwen seem to almost slip into each song, find a guitar grove, pick up a bass line, drums and then vocals that builds into a creshendo. The effect is dramatic and while the lyrics are often about the effects of drought and population displacement, the songs are infections and entirely danceable.
Not that I indulged myself, apart from some foot tapping.

Imidiwan by Tinariwen

Tinariwen’s fourth studio album, Imidiwan: Companions, is no big departure from their earlier material, infact the tracks on it could easily segue into the playlist on their earlier albums (or at least the two that I have – Amassakoul, their second album and Aman Iman: Water Is Life, their third).
Chunking, hypnotic guitar riffs, bluesy lead breaks, guttural lyrics, tribal chants and the occasional female wail comprise Tinariwen’s trademark sound.
The mythology that surrounds the band is probably partially responsible for their success outside of north Africa - Touareg rebels whose sound was forged in refugee and guerilla training camps as they fought for an independent homeland in the deserts of Mali.
The Touareg are desert nomads who habitually dress in all encompassing robes, ride over sand dunes on camels and who have become almost synonymous, as far as the outside world is concerned with Tinariwen.
The band are led by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, a rangy, long-haired poet, who looks a bit like Phil Lynott after a month on the rip. Other singers, also described on their album sleeve notes as poets, occasionally take up the vocals.
Visually they are an impressive band, as a DVD documentary packaged in with Imidiwan testifies.
The fact that the tracks on this album are not, in terms of style that different, from previous recordings is not a criticism. Each song is unique but utilizes familiar Tinariwen elements.
I’ve only been listening to Imidiwan for a week but don’t feel it is as strong an album as Aman Iman, which seemed slightly edgier. Despite that the new album is still travelling between my car and house and is almost on constant loop, aurally dragging me from the damp and humid greenness of Co Down to sun-blasted rocky deserts and cool tents where mint tea is drunk.

Never mind the mbalax

I dug out half a dozen cassette tapes I bought a few years ago and have been scanning the web trying to find ways of transferring them on to CD. There is software you can download for free and cables can be bought cheaply, but even in these times of credit crunch I keep thinking it would be simpler to take them in somewhere and get them copied.
The problem with this is that the tapes are blank cassettes onto which music has been recorded. A company which specialises in transferring material from tape to CD might object because it would put them in breach of copyright laws. However, the cassettes were bought at a street booth in a market in Africa where the practice of simply taping albums and selling them to customers is widespread.
I've been listening to African music since the late 1980s when I went to see Zimbabwean group the Bhundu Boys in the Mean Fiddler in London. I'd heard them on John Peel's show on BBC radio but not really taken that much notice of them.
Being tall and gangly I'm not a natural dancer - all arms and legs, creating a health hazard for those standing nearby – so I try to avoid it. However, that night at the Mean Fiddler I found myself writhing into all sort of contortions with the tripping, jangling, guitar-driven sound known as 'township jive'.
I bought a couple of albums on vinyl, and later CD, but they never really captured the energy of the live show. Never-the-less, I was more inclined to listen to African music when Peel played it rather than waiting impatiently for the Dead Kennedys or The Fall.
After a couple of years in London I moved to Madrid and my musical tastes broadened even further – not so much in terms of Flamenco, which I don't mind, but more in Galician folk music and, I have to admit, some very dodgy Spanish pop.
I also used to frequent a tiny little salsa bar called Club Ombu, which was still there in Calle Santa Ana, not far from the Prado, last time I looked. This opened up another musical genre for me and led to quite a few minor injuries among the mostly South American clientele who attended after they got to close to the flailing limbs of the geeky Paddy in the middle of the dance floor.
After moving back to Ireland I started buying into the musical genre now known as world music, which basically covers everything from North African 'Rai', Cuban 'Son', Siberian throat singing, Bollywood soundtracks and even African-Irish fusion.
I've a fairly extensive record collection (1,000 or so CDS) and I'd say maybe a quarter of those are by artists who are singing in a language that I don't understand.
West African music is my speciality, particularly from Senegal and Mali, but touching into the Arabic-influenced sounds of North Africa as well. Orchestra Baobab, Youssou N'Dour and Baaba Maal from Senegal and Malian artists Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabaté are fairly mainstream in terms of world music aficionados.
Tuareg nomads Tinariwen are romanticised as rebels who roamed the Sahara Desert with guns and guitars strapped to their backs, trying to establish a separatist state while listening to the music of Bob Dylan. Their albums combine harsh guttural vocals and tribal wails with punk-inspired guitar riffs and their live act has been described by Andy Kershaw (another BBC radio DJ who sadly seems to have fallen on hard times) as the closest thing he has ever seen to the Clash.
Three years ago myself and Sinead went to Gambia in west Africa and had vaguely planned to travel to Dakar, the capital of neighbouring Senegal, to take in some live music. However, we were told it would take days to get there by bus and the cost of hiring a driver and car for an 18-hour trip was prohibitive, although we did cross over into Senegal for a couple of days of getting bitten by mosquitoes in a mangrove swamp.
Back in Gambia I'd a list of Mbalax (Senegalese Lation-infused rock, with elements of soul and African rhythms) artists whose music I wanted to get hold off and so got our regular taxi driver, Yanx, to drive us into Banjul. Yanx - a dreadlocked reggae fan - had the most battered taxi in Gambia and a journey with him was always an adventure. On the first day we were stuck in a huge tailback of cars and he tried to cut past it on the hard shoulder until he saw the road was blocked by soldiers.
"Aw shit. It's the president," he moaned as he almost collided with a couple of Daimlers and their outriders who were speeding past on Gambia's only tarmac-ed stretch of road. Fortunately we weren't shot.
Yanx took us to a couple of stalls before he was happy with the price that I was going to be charged - I think the real rip-off guys were going to charge £1 per album while Yanx secured me the much more reasonable 25p, although he was muttering about how terrible it was that I should be ripped off in such a way simply because I was white.
The owner of the music booth went through my list, ticking off the albums he had, shaking his head at others and saying they were really old and that he didn't stock them any more. "Come back in an hour," he said ripping open boxes of blank tapes and slotting them into the machine before recording them off an original.
So me, Sinead and Yanx wandered off to sit in the shade for a while and have something to eat. No doubt the artists who made the albums resent the loss of royalties that such a practice means for them, but Yanx said it was better for them to get their albums heard by as many people as possible to ensure that they get a good crowd when they play live.
When we got back I was handed over my purchases with nothing but the artists’ names written on them - Es Lo, Super Rail Band, Etoile de Dakar and Le Super Cayor. There was no track listing and so I was never even really sure what the names of the tracks I was listening to were.
Since then our previous stereo packed in and we bought a funky new one last year with DAB radio, iPod port and CD player but no tape deck and until today I’d nothing to play my African cassettes on anymore. For now I’m sitting here listening to Es Lo through Sinead’s headphones on a walkman which I had to borrow from my Da but I reckon I’ll have to try to come to terms with the technology to transfer them to CD before the batteries run out.