Nearly 35 years into their recording career, Saharan blues pioneers Tinariwen are still going strong. Their latest offering, Hoggar, is a delightful and lively collection of songs in their signature sun-soaked sound, buoyed by collaboration with musicians young and old.
The album takes its name from a traditional refuge for the Tuareg, the Hoggar mountains. The gentle, blissed-out rock that the album exhibits calls to mind a group of adventurers resting in the shade with their guitars. This can be taken as a framework for the album as a whole: from a place of safety, listeners and musicians alike are called to look within and examine and address the issues around them. The album artwork reflects this too, showing the musicians surrounded by their families and friends in the shade of the titular mountains.
As has been the case throughout their career, Tinariwen use their lyrics to call attention to the various issues facing not just the Tuareg community but also the wider population of Mali and surrounding Saharan communities. Take ‘Imidiwan Takyadam’, the first collaboration on the album. The lyrics ask bluntly “Have you forgotten your sisters, Who you left behind, Living under a hellish tyranny, That scalds every living heart?” This is a straightforward a call to examine the misogynistic treatment of women not just in the Tuareg music scene, but also by the community at large. Spanish musician Jose Gonzalez, of the Sony Bravia bouncing balls advert fame, lends his voice to the track, and the backing vocals are complemented by a group of female singers.
This may seem contradictory at first: on a track that asks listeners to address the treatment of women, why not have female musicians front and centre? Because, in short, it’s men that need to change their ways, and there exists no more powerful voice to convince his fellow man of the need to change than that of a man. Men must change, so it’s men that need to lead the call to change.
The closing track ‘Aba Malik’ is a fearsome warning to the Wagner Group, mercenaries paid by Putin’s allies, who have been perpetrating violence in and around Mali, that the people of Mali will not lightly forget nor forgive their actions: “Curse you, Wagner! Curse your mother! … If rain were to fall on our homeland/Were it to turn green again/And were I to remember a tinde in springtime/It would only intensify my enmity towards you.” Lest we, and the Wagner Group, forget, Tinariwen’s founders came together during military training under Muammar al-Gaddafi in the 1970s, so these are not idle warnings.
But it’s not all admonishment and calls to action. ‘Sagherat Assani’, featuring the beautiful vocals of Sulafa Elyas, is a gentle reminder to men that women are free to be themselves and choose for themselves: “A woman deserves to be light … If her steps carry her elsewhere/Have the courage to let her go/Before memories concoct shadows.” Elsewhere, ‘Khay Erilan’ is a simple celebration of the Toyota Landcruiser: “Happy is he who owns the latest model/Of Toyota Landcruiser/Go and spend the night in Sebha/And say hello to the one whose skin is more beautiful than a flower.” Top Gear eat your heart out.
All of these lyrics are buoyed along by languid, uncomplicated blues guitar playing. I don’t mean simplistic: there’s plenty of atmospheric reverb on ‘Aba Malik’, for example, and the layered vocal harmonies across the album make for a rich, lush soundscape. I just mean it’s not concerned with displays of technical brilliance. Instead, Tinariwen have always opted more for a gentle desert blues sound above which their vocals can carry their messages aloft.
Taken as a whole, all of this makes Hoggar a good jumping-on point for newcomers to the world of Tinariwen, and a great addition to the collection of long-time fans like myself.
