Tinariwen (2009) Imidiwan "Lulla"

© Tinariwen, Independiente Records

Encontra-se já disponível online para download a música "Lulla" do novo álbum dos Tinariwen Imidiwan: Companions.

Trata-se do 4º álbum dos Tinariwen e será lançado no próximo dia 29 de Junho. O álbum foi gravado em Tessalit (Adrar des Ifoghas) no Mali e foi produzido por Jean-Paul Romann (Lo'Jo, Terakaft). O CD inclui ainda um making of da gravação do álbum.


© Tinariwen

World music review: Tinariwen, Imidiwan
Any band that hails from outside the white picket fence that encircles pop's cosy, English-speaking kingdom will at some point encounter a fork in the road. Having achieved exposure by staying true to their cultural roots, the apple of "assimilation" is dangled and with it comes the temptation to make music that is more instantly familiar to sensitive western ears. It's a dangerous choice, one which scuppered the Bhundu Boys 20 years ago as they slid into "everybody clap your hands" banality. It also arguably diluted the excellence of Amadou and Mariam's post-breakthrough album Welcome to Mali, which occasionally meandered into Anglicised vapidity.

Tinariwen, however, are made of sterner stuff. For more than 30 years, this ragged band of rebel Touaregs from Mali who, like their music, are all bone and sinew, have been filling the open spaces of the northern Sahara with their endless, winding blues. Throughout the past decade they have graduated from the Festival of the Desert to Womad to the South Bank to Glastonbury, and from there into the full glare of the press.

2007's superb Aman Iman completed the journey, turning Tinariwen into proper rock stars. Thankfully, Imidiwan reveals no Faustian pact with fame. Their fourth album betrays none of the tell-tale signs of a world music act pandering to a Western audience, no half-hearted style-hopping or pidgin-English sloganeering. Aside from parentheses after each song title containing a colloquial English translation, it's very much business as usual. This is good news. In the manner of most great bands, Tinariwen are largely content to do one thing brilliantly. Like the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, Kraftwerk and AC/DC, they have created a sound that is theirs and theirs alone - a rolling, dusty groove whipped mercilessly into great uncoiling waves of rhythm, overlaid with the mournful, atavistic moan that remains the expressive birthright of the world's dispossessed, whether they be Mississippi cotton-pickers, displaced Aborigines or north African nomads.

Tinariwen's signature sound is hard-wired into Imidiwan, from opener Imidiwan Afrik Tendam to the fuzzy funk of Tahult In, and it carries an emotional resonance that transcends language. This is deeply personal music, with scant regard for commercial considerations; it's geography and history that really count. The climate, landscape and tumultuous events that define Mali's desert region brands Imidiwan with an in-built narrative and a compelling sense of drama.

Other highlights include Kel Tamashek, a dervish jig that's all jagged riffs, and Chabiba, a staggeringly beautiful anthem to youth. Only the nameless closing instrumental seems guilty of trying too hard. Drifting in ominously like a sandstorm on the horizon, it's heavy on atmospherics and shifts a little uncomfortably into U2 territory, the end result sounding rather aimless. That minor gripe aside, Tinariwen just keep on keepin' on, relentless and brilliant as the Saharan sun.

Graeme Thomson
The Observer,
Sunday 14 June 2009