Tinariwen - [2004] Amassakoul and [2007] Aman Iman-Water Is Life

Hello friends.
It is high time I got around to posting some fine music from around the globe. For too long now there has been a rather too strict diet of rock and chart music here. I was looking through the archived posts and there used to be a lot more Arabic or Indian or Spanish and other albums which, mostly, went down really well. I don't know about you but I love being introduced to music from far off lands. I love hearing the crude acoustic instruments, the raw vocals and most of all I love being transported away to some distant culture just by listening to the music from the people who live there.
In that tradition I now bring you my latest find (I say 'find' as I kind of got lazy on this one - found it on avax and just had to share it with you so I re uploaded it!).

I bring you....
Tinariwen.



Never heard of them? Me neither.
This might help:
Tinariwen is a Touareg group from the southern Sahara whose music is close to the blues of Ali Farka Toure.
The band's name means ''empty places'' which certainly reflects their desert homeland.
Forced from their nomadic life in the Sahara, they were fighters in the Touareg insurgency against the Malian government.
So, the band formed in 1982 in Colonel Gadhafi's rebel camps.
The Libyan leader recruited this nation-less and disenfranchised people with promises to help them in their cause. Gadhafi implied that he would train the Kel Tamashek and provide weapons to fight for their independence from the Malian government, but eventually the stateless rebels slowly realized that Gadhafi's only intention was to use these fierce fighters in his own wars.
Radicalized by war and drought, Tinariwen invented a new style of music known as Tishoumaren, or music of the ishumar. Ishumar, which means unemployed, refers to a generation of young, enraged Tamashek exiles: people who left their stomping grounds for work after much repression and drought in Mali. Tinariwen wanted to carry on traditional music, but in exile they could rarely find the 30 or more musicians necessary to play the style. They have combined traditional musical forms with a modern rebellious and radical rock sensibility -- traditional instruments such as the teherdent lute and shepherd flute were discarded in favor of the electric guitar, electric bass and drums.
Their Music is loosely based on traditional Touareg music and the harsh melodies of the one-stringed Touareg violin, but also incorporates influences such as Bob Marley together with the other disparate influences, both western and middle eastern, which managed to penetrate that far into the desert.
With no postal or phone system to carry messages of resistance, Tinriwen's music became the underground telephone for the rebellion. Their sung poetry calls for the political awakening of consciousness and approaches the problems of the exile, of the repression in Mali, of the policy of their people's expulsion to Algeria and of the claims for sovereignty and self-determination.
Their cassettes were banned in Mali and Algeria and anyone carrying a recording risked bodily harm by the authorities.

Quite a history eh? Makes the listening experience all that more intriguing.
Close your eyes and float out to the desert.

Here are some links of inrerest too...I liked them, thought you might.
Here
Wikipedia
Page of Womad 2004 at BBC3 online


CHECK THIS OUT!
I just found an absolutely brilliant live set of this band playing in 2004, something called WOMAD festival. (World of Music, Arts and Dance)
You need Realplayer or real alternative installed to hear it.
Highly recommended!
CLick Me
You can always go to the direct page at BBC3 Online and click the listen link and read the stuff about it too:
HERE
When you get to that page you'll find a host of other artists that played at the same festival.
Wow. What a nice find!

Oh and here is the Womad site too in case you want to check through what other artists they have there.

LINKS:
Tinariwen - [2004] Amassakoul
Single Rar Archive] Click or Click
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Single Rar Alternative1] Click or Click
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Tinariwen - [2007] Aman Iman: Water Is Life
Single Rar Archive] Click or Click
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Single Rar Alternative1] Click or Click
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