1. Awnafin (04:08)
2. Azawad (04:01)
3. Amzagh (04:18)
4. Amidinin Tad Adouniya (03:54)
5. As Sastnan Hidjan (05:16)
6. Timtarin (feat. Hindi Zahra)(05:50)
7. Tihoussay (05:02)
8. Anha Achal Wad Namda (03:37)
9. Tabsit (05:18)

Tamikrest return with a vivid, irrepressible rock and roll statement. Their most powerful album since 2013’s wildly acclaimed Chatma, Tamotaït finds the band not only turning up the volume, but also sharpening their ruminations on the state of the Sahara and the world beyond. Features acclaimed Moroccan singer Hindi Zahra and Japanese traditional musicians.

Sometimes music is more than the notes played or the words sung. Sometimes it’s a spirit that catches fire and burns with a dangerous, dazzling flame. On Tamotaït, Tamikrest’s fifth studio album, the music blazes bright and long. With the political situation so volatile and desperate in the Saharan ancestral lands from which Tamikrest comes, this is more than an album. This is resistance.

But in there, too, is the dream of the future. “The definition of the album is there in its title,” explains singer, guitarist and songwriter Ousmane Ag Mossa. “Tamotaït means hope for a positive change.”

Change as in an end to the fighting that’s plagued northern Mali and the wider region for the past several years; change as in the chance to prosper within their own homeland – Azawad – a proto nation that the nomadic Tuareg (or Kel Tamasheq as they prefer to be called) briefly possessed in 2012. It is music formed from thoughts, dreams, inspiration, and above all, collective experimentation.

“We are a band and when we play together everyone brings their way of playing. For the compositions, some pieces start from a riff, another part from a melody or a rhythm and each musician adds his ideas afterwards. The idea was to keep a common thread that comes from Tamasheq music and to take it through different worlds, whether they come from our influences or from our encounters during our travels.”

That common thread is passion. You can hear it from the very first note of the opening cut, “Awnafin,” where defiance powers the vocals, all the way to the floating, airy melodies that close “Tabsit.” It’s assouf, music forged in exile. Because of the toxic regional conflict, for most of the last decade the founding members of Tamikrest have not lived in Kidal, Mali, the desert crossroads town where the band began in 2007.

Yet exile can also mean the hope of return, and on “Amzagh” and “As Sastnan Hidjan,” the two tracks the group sees as pivotal to understanding the themes of Tamotaït, Tamikrest sing of the possibilities that lie ahead for the Kel Tamasheq people.

“‘Amzagh’ is a song that describes the people of today and reflects about the people of the future,” observes percussionist and singer Aghlaly Ag Mohamedine. “What are we doing right now and how this will influence the future.”

And “Sastnam Hidjan” peers into one of those futures: ‘It’s about revolution,” he says. “A revolution in the Tamasheq culture. We want to fight for our culture and tradition. We are not taking the oppression for granted. We stand and we fight.” That’s more than lip service. You can hear it in the way the music builds and builds, the dual, intertwined guitars of Ag Mossa and Paul Salvagnac relentless and insistent, until it finally all boils over. The blaze burning bright.

Yet fire does more than cleanse. It also brings light and warmth and comfort, and its glow fills the beautifully aching “Timtarin,” where the band is joined by an ideal collaborator (Salvagnac played in her band for several years), renowned Moroccan singer Hindi Zahra.

“We invited her to play with us at one of our concerts in Brussels,” Ag Mossa recalls. “We hadn’t rehearsed; she just came on stage and it all happened very naturally. We really liked what she brought to our songs and invited her to come and sing on other dates. Each time, we managed to create something very natural and spontaneous. She has a remarkable voice and she’s a very good improviser. It seemed natural to us for her to sing on the album. We recorded without any rehearsal, and the first take was the right one.”

Tamotaït is the most expansive and adventurous album that Tamikrest have made, exploring every corner of their sound. There’s even music they made far from the Sahara – in Japan. On tour there, Ag Mossa had been very taken by the sound of their traditional instruments.

“I decided to go back, to know more about the culture and music. During my visit, I composed some songs on one of the remote islands of Japan. And since the songwriting of this album started in the desert and ended on the islands in Japan, we believed that it was a good idea to reflect this on the album as well.”

Tamikrest’s plans to record there were almost derailed by a typhoon. But one track does appear on the album: the final cut, “Tabsit,” with its atmospheric, gossamer melody. The shamisen and five-string tonkori of guests Atsushi Sakta and Oki Kano glide around the guitars to create a piece where the desert truly does meet the Rising Sun.

Most of Tamotaït, though, was recorded in rural France, working with producer David Odlum (Glen Hansard, Gemma Hayes, Tinariwen), stepping up from his mixing role on the band’s 2016 release, Kidal.

“We wanted to make a modern album but with vintage sounds, and we fell in love with his studio, Black Box, when we visited a few years ago,” Ag Mossa explains. We wanted to work as much as possible on the sounds beforehand and not leave everything for the mixing. So we spent time with him, finalising the arrangements before we began recording, and he also helped us a lot in the choice of amps and microphones.”

The Odlum effect is especially apparent than on “Anha Achal Wad Namda.” Just listen for that moment where the taut rhythm section of Ag Mohamedine, Cheikh Ag Tiglia (bass) and Nicolas Grupp (drums) kick in and the track lifts off to the stratosphere with a full-throated roar. It’s pure, perfect rock bliss, a reminder of how music can speak with such a towering voice – and why a decade into their acclaimed career, Tamikrest have become one of the best rock’n’roll bands in the world.

That’s a big title to carry. But Tamotaït proves they’re worthy of it. This album is what rock’n’roll can be, what all music can be. Music as a weapon of hope. Songs as a vessel of truth.

Tamikrest are:
Ousmane Ag Mossa – vocals, guitar
Aghaly Ag Mohamedine – voc als, percussion
Cheikh Ag Tiglia – bass, backing vocals
Paul Salvagnac – guitar
Nicolas Grupp – drums

01. Mawarniha Tartit
02. Wainan Adobat
03.Manhouy Inerizhan
04. War Toyed
05. Atwitas
06. Tanakra
07. War Tila Eridaran
08. Ehad Wad Nadorhan
09. Erres Hin Atouan
10. Adoutat Salilagh
11. Adad Osan Itibat

All around Kidal, the Malian desert stretches in every direction. Endless horizons of rock and sand, barren and parched. This is the southwestern edge of the Sahara, the home of the Tuareg people, and the town of Kidal is one of their main cultural centres. Fought over, conquered and re-conquered, it remains the symbol of Tuareg defiance and hope, the spiritual home of a dispossessed people.

It is also the town in which Tamikrest first came together as a group, and on Kidal, Tamikrest’s fourth studio album, the band pays homage to this place that’s nurtured them and their people.

It’s a cry of suffering and the yell of rebellion. It’s power and resistance. This is pure Tuareg rock’n’roll.

“I wrote most of the songs when I was in the desert,” explains singer and lead guitarist Ousmane Ag Mossa. But it had to be that way, he says. “If you want to talk about the situation, you really need to live it.”

From the simmering intensity behind the opener, “Mawarniha Tartit,” through the sweet slide work of second guitarist Paul Salvagnac on “Atwitas” to the full-blooded roar on “Adoutat Salilagh,” this is a band fired with passion for their people and the centuries of injustice they’ve endured.

“Kidal talks about dignity,” Ag Mossa says. “We consider the desert as an area of freedom to live in. But many people consider it as just a market to sell to multinational companies, and for me, that is a major threat to the survival of our nomadic people.”

The music on the album has deep roots in the Tuareg tradition, but it burns with a brilliant, modern flame. “My love is my country, my ambition is freedom,” Ag Mossa sings on “War Tila Eridaran,” a proud statement of intent. “No being must live in oppression, ignominy, and eternal repression.” It’s the sound of a people who endure their struggle every single day. To them, the idea of what Kidal represents is almost as important as the place itself.

The Tuareg have always been nomadic people, their lives in motion across the desert, sometimes taking with them only the bare essentials. But for one brief moment they possessed a home after the Tuaregs rose up in 2012 and declared the independent state of Azawad in the northeast of Mali. It lasted less than a year, as first al-Qaeda conduits swept in from the north, imposing Islamist rule, and then the French military arrived to liberate the area – once again leaving the Tuareg with little or no chance for self-determination. But the dream remains, still trapped between governments and the greed of global corporations.

“Kidal, the cradle of all these uprisings, continues to resist the many acts perpetrated by obscure hands against our people,” notes band associate Rhissa Ag Mohamed. “This album evokes all the suffering and manipulation of our populations caught in pincers on all sides.”

The songs on Kidal evoke a long history. And for all the electricity, as Ag Mossa observes, “It’s very traditional if you go deeply into what I’m playing.”

Everything here is focused. Everything burns. Ag Mossa punctuates his lyrics with inspired bolts of guitar. Even an acoustic song like “Tanakra” maintains a luminous edge.

But from their debut in 2010 onwards, Tamikrest have had the fire in their music, and it’s built with each release.  Chatma, their third disc, hit number one on the European World Music charts and was acclaimed as one of the Albums of the Year in publications across the globe. Songlines magazine gave them the Best Group Award, while their live performances showed a band whose sound sent sparks flying.

With Kidal, that blaze is roaring. Recorded in Bamako, Mali in the summer of 2016, the album was produced by Mark Mulholland (Afro-Haitian Experimental Orchestra) and mixed by David Odlum, who received a Grammy for his work with Tinariwen. It’s an album that’s taken two years to make, Ag Mossa says, “because we share the same difficulties of our people.” And the songs here mirror their joys, their pain and their unwillingness to accept things as they are.

There’s a raw beauty in Tamikrest’s rock’n’roll. It’s there in the driving, insistent groove that powers the songs, the lean, snaking bass lines and the guitars that twine and twist around the melodies, and the utterly natural musical blending of Sahel Africa, the Maghreb, and the West – a reflection of influences as diverse as Pink Floyd, Rachid Taha, and flamenco. Yet the Sahara, and the people who live there, is always firmly at its heart.

“This music was founded on a very precise cause, the Tuareg cause,” Ag Mossa told journalist Andy Morgan in 2013. They might be threatened on all sides, but they won’t give up, and this album celebrates who the Tuareg are, the Kel Tamasheq (“those who speak Tamasheq”), the keepers of an ancient and endangered cultural voice.

Tamikrest’s new album is the music of defiance, of hope. It’s rock’n’roll from the Sahara, the sound of the Tuareg dream, a dream that will be renewed again, in their ancestral town: Kidal.

++++++++++

Kidal was recorded at Studio Bogolan, in Bamako, Mali, August/September, 2016
Produced by Mark Mulholland
Mixed by David Odlum at Black Box Recording (Noyant la Gravoyere, France)

Tamikrest are:
Ousmane Ag Mossa – vocals, lead guitar, acoustic guitar
Aghaly Ag Mohamedine – djembe, backing vocals
Cheick Ag Tiglia – bass, acoustic guitar, backing vocals
Paul Salvagnac – lead & rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar, slide guitar
Nicolas Grupp – drums, percussion

Side A:
1. Tisnant An Chatma           
2. Tamiditin                         
3. Fassous Tarahnet           
4. Itous            

Side B:
1. Achaka Achail Aynaian Daghchilan             
2. Outamachek                                                   
3. Aratan N Tinariwen                                       
4. Arantane N’ Adagh

“Taksera” (which in Tamashek means ‘a celebration with music’) is a rough and ready live album that is sure to give jolt to Tuareg-rock group Tamikrest’s already heady reputation. Recorded on a summer festival stage during their 2014 “Chatma” tour, the album vividly showcases the visceral and improvisational power of the band. The hypnotic grooves of the songs are blissfully extended, and the band’s signature drive and electric guitar telepathy are pushed up front and center.

The material on “Taksera” visits all three of the band’s acclaimed studio albums and gives a sharply focused argument as to why in the last few years Tamikrest has been one of the most lauded young bands from the African continent. Their 2013 album Chatma reached the #1 position on the World Music Charts Europe and graced year-end “best of” lists at Uncut, Mojo, Les Inrocks and The Quietus. Songlines magazine went even farther and gave them their “Best Group Award” for 2013.

“Taksera” was engineered and mixed by Jean-Paul Romann, who has produced seminal albums by Tuareg music legends Tinariwen and Terakaft. The album was recorded at the Burg Herzberg Festival in Alsfeld, Germany on August 1, 2014.

This RECORD STORE DAY LP is a limited edition pressing of 1500 on 180-gram audiophile vinyl with a gatefold sleeve and download code.

“Taksera” is in every way the celebration that the album title promises. It energetically underlines Tamikrest’s unique cultural mission and their commitment to explore new possibilities for Tuareg music.  It shows a band full of hard-earned confidence and swagger; a band in love with turning up their amps and letting it rip.

www.tamikrest.net/
www.twitter.com/Tamikrest
www.facebook.com/tamikrest

01. Tisnant an Chatma
02. Imanin bas zihoun
03. Itous
04. Achaka Achail Aynaian daghchilan
05. Djanegh etoumast
06. Assikal
07. Toumast anlet
08. Takma
09. Adounia tabarat
10. Timtar

Tamikrests’s new album “Chatma”, their third, deftly navigates these experiences and fashions them into a fully persuasive and poetic musical document. The album is filled with sober reflection, moral indignation, musical experimentation, cultural celebration and the kick of rock and roll.

“Chatma” is also Tamikrest’s first album to be wholly written around a defined theme. In Tamashek “Chatma” means “Sisters” and the band has dedicated the album in their own words to: “the courage of the Tuareg women, who have ensured both their children’s survival and the morals of their fathers and brothers.”
The opening track “Tisnant an Chatma (The suffering of my sisters)” is a heartbreaking homage: «Who can estimate the
suffering felt by the soul / of one who sees her sisters exhausted from waiting/ of one who sees her sisters exhausted from
waiting between countries, in deep distress /and daily oppression?«

Fittingly for an album so lyrically evocative, “Chatma“ also delivers Tamikrest’s most wide-screen and wide-ranging sonic statement to date. The infectious, sing-along rock stylings of “Imanin bas zihoun“, the acoustic seduction of “Adounia tabarat”, the Pink Floyd influenced montage “Assikal” and the lush, melancholy ambiance of the albums finale, “Timtar”, all add up to a sustained audio adventure. Echoes of dub, blues, psychedelia, funk and even art-rock are seamlessly weaved by Tamikrest into their increasingly individual take on the Tuareg musical tradition.
And on an album where the title translates as “Sisters”, it makes perfect sense that this time around we hear the full emergence of
the haunting voice of female vocalist Wonou Walet Sidati in tandem with lead vocalist Ousmane Ag Mossa. A new guitarist, Paul Salvagnac has also joined the band, bringing with him fresh textures and possibilities.

1. Tizarate
2. Fassous Tarahnet
3. Nak Amadjar Nidounia
4. Aratan N Tinariwen
5. Ayitma Madjam
6. Aidjan Adaky
7. Addektegh
8. Tarhamanine Assinegh
9. Nak Akaline Tinza (Tinzaouatene)
10. Tidit
11. Dihad Tedoun Itran

Music always is a borderline experience. Especially when not only stylistically boundaries are shifting, but the centres of musical creativity are moving.

It certainly would be an exaggeration to state that cities like London and New York, Manchester and Los Angeles have played itself out, but certain symptoms of fatigue are visible in the steady process of looking for ‘the next big thing’. So it is a breath of fresh air that a country like Mali is offering new musical possibilities. Mali-based pop stars like Amadou & Mariam, Salif Keita, Habib Koité or Tinariwen, just like the legend of Desert Blues, the late Ali Farka Touré, have moved beyond the boundaries of just World Music fans. Mali is a huge West African country that combines various languages and cultures, different races and traditions. If one hears music with open ears, one can’t ignore Mali.

But there are not only the big stars that have proved themselves in Europe and the United States – more and more new bands are making themselves known. One of the young and upcoming bands is Tamikrest, who are about to release their second album called “Toumastin”. Their debut album “Adagh” already generated a buzz throughout the world and was met with enthusiam from fans and critics alike who agreed that these young musicians are focusing the rebellious power of rock music in their own special way.

Tamikrest are from Kidal, a remote desert town in the northwest of the Sahara, some 2,000 kilometres north of the capital Bamako. The band members are all Tuaregs, a group of people that is spread all over North and some of West Africa, i.e. Niger, Mali, Algeria, Burkina Faso and Libya. In ancient times the Tuareg were the proud rulers of the Sahara, but their territory was divided in different countries and they had to fight long and hard for independence. Between 1990 and 1995 this fight evolved into a bloody civil war.

After the war many of the rebel fighters traded the Kalashnikovs and hand grenades for guitars and microphones. The band Tinariwen is the most prominent example for the unusual establishment of peace through the spirit of music. But their mission is carried further in their songs. The members of Tamikrest are substantially younger than Tinariwen’s and they have not actively fought in the war, but there is a close resemblance between both bands. Just like Tinariwen Tamikrest have found a way to translate the pulse of the Blues – whose roots lie in North Africa – back to the Tuareg language Tamaschek.  They take generators deep into the desert to have electricity for their guitars in search for the perfect synthesis of their traditional ritual drumming with the music of Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley.

Tamikrest’s leader Ousmane Ag Mossa is quick to admit his influences: “When I was young I listened to a lot of traditional Tuareg music as well as Tinariwen. There was no other music. I started to learn the guitar around that time and it was only in 2000 that I had access to cassettes of Bob Marley and Dire Straits. That changed my musical vision completely and I stopped to classify music. Music is just music, no matter where it comes from. Music is just too big for me to comprehend in its entirety. My goal is to broaden my horizon step by step.”

Tamikrest are on a trip into the infinite world of music. When the band was founded in 2006 they had a hard time getting exposure in their homeland as it proved to be difficult for music with ancient traditions in a country that is flooded with Western-influenced hip-hop and pop. Things changed abruptly when they played the Festival Au Desert in 2008 and met with the American/Australian band Dirtmusic made up of Chris Eckman (Walkabouts), Chris Brokaw (Come) and Hugo Race (Hugo Race & True Spirit). Ousmane talks about the fateful meeting: “We jammed in tents, open air in the desert sand and on stage. This has extended my musical knowledge tremendously and from that point on I played my guitar in a different way. Through Dirtmusic we had the chance to work in a professional studio for the first time. There was no way had we would let that opportunity pass, so we travelled the long way from Kidal to Bamako.”

With their second album “Toumastin” the young Tuareg rebels create their own universe using even brighter colours. The enchanted ancient mystique of the songs captures the ear immediately, but as the music carries on the band bridges the gap between the African Blues and hypnotic dub, psychedelic funk and an almost supernatural kind of desert garage. The guitars are more offensive, the groove deepens and the Tamaschek chants are merging with the meandering guitar riffs like a caravan voyage through ancient times.  Tamikrest are ready to embrace the future while proudly maintaining the rich tradition of their folk.

01. Outamachek 3:25
02. Aicha 3:19
03. Amidini 4:17
04. Tamiditin 3:40
05. Aratane 5:12
06. Tidite Tille 3:53
07. Tahoult 4:14
08. Alhoriya 3:28
09. Ahar 3:09
10. Adounia Mahegagh 3:32
11. Toumastin 4:24

As far as I’m concerned, it’s Tinariwen who created the path,” declares Ousmane Ag Mossa, frizzy-locked leader of Tamikrest, in a pre-emptive strike against a thousand inevitable questions. “But the way I see it, if younger bands don’t come through, then Touareg music will eventually die. They created the path and now it’s up to us to walk down it and create the future.”

Ousmane was born twenty-seven years ago in a village called Tin-Zaouaten, a solitary speck squeezed up against Mali’s northeastern border with Algeria. It’s a remote marginal place.   Or to put it another way: there’s distant, there’s remote and beyond both of those there’s Tin-Zaouaten.

To an outsider, the village would appear to be nothing more than a motley collection of one storey adobe and breeze-block houses, huddling together for protection against the burning sun, the black rocky hills and the lonely immensity of the surrounding desert.   But to Ousmane, it’s home.

Like its ‘neighbour’ Tessalit, two hundred and fifty kilometres to the west, Tin-Zaouaten is blessed with a water table that lurks benignly just below the surface of the gritty soil. Dig a few metres and you can usually find water in abundance.   That’s why Tin-Zaouaten, or ‘Tinza’ for short, is famed in the desert for its gardens and garden produce. Ousmane’s father Mossa was born a nomad out in the bush, but by the time Ousmane arrived he had settled in Tinza, making a living from growing onions, beetroot, carrots and dates, and selling them in the local markets.

In 1985 drought shook desert life to its core.   The rains had failed for several seasons and the village was haunted by famine.   “I was born in a time of calamity,” says Ousmane. “In the middle of dreadful events for the Touareg people. My parents knew so much hardship. Then when I was five years old the rebellion broke out. It was 1990, the year of war. I was a child, and I used to hide in amongst the rocks with the other women and children, just a few kilometres north of the village over the Algerian border. When I think of that time, it’s as if it’s all still happening in front of me.”

Thus Ousmane’s childhood was buffeted by the searing winds of recent Touareg history.   The droughts of ‘68 to ’74 almost destroyed the animal herds and with them the ancient nomadic way of life of the Touareg.   The drought of ’84 to ’85 almost dealt the final blow.   Thousands of young men fled into exile in Algeria, Libya, Burkina Faso and beyond. That’s where the modern Touareg guitar style of music was born and then nourished by anger, homesickness, frustration and dreams of a better life.   It was this generation of Touareg men, known as the ishumar, who returned to Mali and Niger in 1990 to rebel against the callousness, corruption and arrogance of the governments in the distant capitals of Bamako and Niamey.

At first Ousmane just listened to traditional Touareg music at home, and the newer guitar music on battered old cassettes. “I well remember hearing my first Tinariwen songs. I was about five. After the death of my mother, my father was obliged to take me to live with my grown-up sister. One morning I was sitting in front of the house and this guy walked by singing a song by Inteyeden called ‘Imidiwan Kel Hoggar’ (‘My Friends the Hoggar People’). It went straight into my brain…ha ha ha.”

A few years later Ousmane began to play the guitar himself, and write songs. He was attending a school in Tinza called Les Enfants de l’Adrar, set up by a French NGO and a local man turned community leader called Hama Ag Sid Ahmed.   At the end of every school year the children would create and perform musical plays about pressing themes like ignorance, drought, education and culture.

Hama bought the school an acoustic guitar, and Ousmane adopted the instrument. With his constant friend Cheikh Ag Tiglia, he would write songs and perform them at the school shows. He learned the Tamashek guitar style by listening to a particular cassette which Tinariwen’s leader Ibrahim ‘Abaraybone’ had recorded in Algeria back in 1998.

In 2002, events once again undermined the tenuous calm and stability in Tinza. The village was home to one of the southern desert’s most infamous freedom fighters and warlords, Ibrahim Ag Bahanga.   For this reason it became a military no-go zone.   Ousmane’s father left to live with his eldest sons in Libya, and both Ousmane and Cheikh went south to Kidal

Kidal is the capital of the far north east of Mali, a region known as the Adagh des Iforas (‘The Mountains of the clan Iforas’).   With its wide sandy streets and dispersed one storey earthen houses, Kidal has the feel of a frontier town.   For the Adagh Touareg, it’s where it all happens.

Ousmane and Cheikh played the guitar and sang in hidden corners of Kidal, around a fire, drinking bittersweet Touareg tea with their friends.   Their reputations grew very slowly, steadily, without wild leaps or fanfares. After a while they heard that a local cultural centre called the DDRK or ‘Maison du Luxembourg’, founded by the Duchess of Luxembourg who had fallen in love with the town when she visited it in 2001, was offering music classes.   The teacher turned out to be Juhan Ecaré, a musician from Ivory Coast.

Then this French theatre troupe called La Calma arrived in town and enrolled over fifty young people to perform a massive theatre piece featuring sketches about a host of local issues. It went down a storm in January 2006 at a local festival called ‘The Saharan Nights of Essouk’.   Although Ousmane didn’t take part in the project, claiming disinterest in theatre (“I’m a musician…theatre’s not my thing”), Cheikh went along and played with a local percussionist called Aghaly Ag Mohammedine and a bass player called Ibrahim Ahmed, aka ‘Pinnochio’ or ‘Pino’ for short.

On their return, Pino proposed that they form a proper band and record a demo at a small studio, which had been set up at the Maison du Luxembourg.   They also decided that they needed a name, and agreed on ‘Tamikrest’, which means the knot, the junction, the coalition, in Tamashek, the language of Touareg.   “Each of us came from a different place, a different zone,” explains Ousmane. “Cheikh and I from Tinza. Aghaly and Mossa Maiga from Kidal. Pino from Gao. But we found each other and we had the same ideas, the same intentions. We were like a coalition.”

On the 23^rd May 2006, the army garrison in Kidal was attacked by a new Touareg rebel movement called the Alliance Démocratique pour le Changement (ADC). “It was a hard time for me,” remembers Ousmane. “I woke up early that morning and discovered that the town had turned into a nightmare.   Those who wanted to join the rebels had already done so. But, in general, that wasn’t the choice of me and my friends. Because we’d never been in the army. We were musicians, not people who carry arms.”

By the end of the year a fragile peace had been restored, although Tinza’s recalcitrant son Ibrahim Ag Bahanga refused to compromise and remained on the run with his own splinter militia. Tamikrest performed at the peace Forum in March 2007, when the Touareg rebels met with the Malian government and thousands of community representatives in Kidal to map out a way forward.

The group were developing their style and their fan base, which consisted mainly of Kidal’s younger generation.   They knew the Tamashek guitar style intimately, but they were also deeply into rap, metal, Maghrebi pop and afro-disco music from Ivory Coast. They had new tastes, new desires, new ambitions and Tamikrest was their band.

Pino was quite a mover and shaker. In late 2007 he contacted Manny Ansar, the director of the now world-famous Festival in the Desert and clinched a gig for Tamikrest. The band found the money to transport themselves the 600 miles eastward to Timbuktu.   In the silky dunes of Essakane they met Dirtmusic, a group of rock’n’roll veterans from the USA and Australia.   It was one of those meetings fashioned by fate in the workshops of destiny.

Chris Eckman of Dirtmusic remembers the meeting thus: “On our first morning in Essakane we woke up hearing music, so we went across the sand to the tent opposite ours and that’s where Tamikrest was playing. Chris Brokaw grabbed his dobro and headed over, then Hugo and I eventually did the same and basically for three days we didn’t leave.”

Once again music overflew all barriers of language, culture, style, shyness and reticence. The friendship formed at Essakane grew in the following months and lead to an invitation by Dirtmusic to come to the Malian capital Bamako to make an album, and contribute to Dirtmusic’s own oeuvre.   After another epic journey of 1,200 miles, by car and bus, Ousmane, Aghaly and crew entered their first professional studio and ‘Adagh’ was born.

“It felt very natural to play with Dirtmusic,” asserts Ousmane. “I’ve always appreciated all kinds of different music and it was such a pleasure to play with a different kind of band. Music isn’t something you study; it’s something you learn with your ears. I’d been listening and playing along to Bob Marley, to Marc Knopfler and Dire Straits, to Tinariwen for years. We’d been listening to so much international music and that’s why the marriage with Dirtmusic worked.”

The end of 2009 finds Tamikrest on the cusp of the world and the next chapter in their great adventure. “This opportunity to go to Europe feels like a big responsibility,” says Ousmane. “I feel like someone who’s done this exam and is now waiting for the result.   We’ve already achieved quite a bit, but the hardest is still ahead.”

One thing is certain: Ousmane is clear about the band’s mission.   “The situation of the Touareg is very difficult right now,” he declares. “Even before I played the guitar and started recording, I had this ambition to be a lawyer or you might say, an ‘advocate’. I wanted to be capable of expressing the hurt I felt in my heart, and speak out about the situation, even at the United Nations. Because we’re a people who don’t have journalists, we don’t have advocates.   But it was only later that I realised that a musician can play that role.”

“What is the weakest part of any nation or people? It’s ignorance. We are stuck in our ignorance. I see the world changing, racing ahead, and leaving us behind. And the only thing that is holding us back is our ignorance.   As artists, it’s our duty to make our problems known to the world, to sing songs about the nomadic life, about our traditions and culture. But above all, revolutionary songs, about what we see, about what the government is doing to our people, which makes no sense to me.”

There it is…Tamikrest, the knot, the coalition, the future.

Andy Morgan