‘Villages are being burned and animals are being slaughtered. We have to let the world know what’s happening’: Tinariwen and Imarhane fight over Tuareg music | Tinariwen

SSince its formation in 1979, the Tuareg guitar band Tinariwen has been constantly on the move. The Grammy Award-winning group, based in Mali, Libya and Algeria, has used their desert blues to lament the wandering refugee situation that continues to this day.

Co-founder Abdullah Ag Al-Husseini says the group is currently in Algeria, after band members were forced to flee their homes in Mali in October 2024. “The Malian army and the Russian mercenary group Wagner are burning villages, slaughtering animals and raping women,” he says. “Nobody talks about what’s going on – neither politicians nor journalists – so we have to let the world know about it through our music.”

While the Tuareg people are traditionally nomadic, living across the Sahara, the increasingly complex politics of the region often place them in violent situations. More recently, clashes on Mali’s northern border between encroaching armed Islamist groups, the Malian army, Tuareg rebel groups and Wagner mercenaries have caused mass displacement and human rights violations in the country. It’s a harrowing struggle that now takes center stage on Tinariwen’s tenth studio album, Hoggar.

Across the eleven tracks, the group marries the classic, gently stumbling Tuareg rhythm – sometimes resembling the gait of a camel – with finger-picked guitar lines and the husky power of group vocal harmonies. On Abba Malik, a sparse, softly swelling guitar melody accompanies a sparse drum beat, and the anachronistic emotional baritone of co-founder Ibrahim Ag Al Habib, who sings about the abuses of Wagner’s group, exclaiming: “Fuck you, Wagner / Fuck your mother!” On the peppy Erghad Afewo, the group addresses tribal infighting among the Tuareg people, while the soaring guitar riffs of opener Amidinim Ehaf Solan provide a cheerful accompaniment to the lover’s hopeful lyrics about discovering a green and pleasant homeland for their people.

“We don’t want independence, we just want autonomy,” says Al-Husseini, wearing a turtleneck as he speaks via video call from Paris, where Tinariwen is touring. “We want a place for our people where we can be safe in Azawad” – the name given to the Tuareg lands in northern Mali. “We are all refugees in Algeria now. We are not alone, but we have nowhere else to go, even though we have done nothing wrong.”

More than just protest music, Tinariwen’s rock-influenced imagining of Tuareg desert blues has reached audiences beyond their own community over the past 48 years. Robert Plant said of them: “This was the music I had been searching for all my life.” Jack White invited the group to record their 2023 album Amatssou at his studio in Nashville. Swedish-Argentine singer-songwriter José González is a big fan of “their blend of hypnotic guitars and meditative vocals with uplifting ensemble vocals” that he showcases on Hoggar. He says: “I heard the album ‘Aman Iman’ for the first time in 2007 and I was amazed by the songs.” “When I was practicing guitar at home, I would strum and try to imitate their rhythms. I fell in love.”

The founding members of the group first met in a refugee camp in Algeria as teenagers, then moved to Libya where they were briefly recruited into Muammar Gaddafi’s paramilitary forces with the promise of Libyan citizenship, which was eventually fulfilled. Upon moving to Mali in 1989, the group decided to trade their weapons for guitars and began playing as a wedding band, and bootleg cassettes quickly became popular among the displaced Tuareg community.

“When we started, we didn’t have the internet, so we didn’t know what was possible,” Al-Husseini says. “All we knew was that we wanted to keep playing music.” “We lived in the bush and had weddings, so the spread of Tuareg music was a surprise to all of us.”

In 1998, the group gained international recognition when French folk band Lo’Jo shared a bill with them at a festival in Bamako. With its politicized Tamasheq-language lyrics and syncopated rhythms, the group invited Tinariwen to tour France, and The Tisdas Radio Sessions, released in 2001, became their first release available outside North Africa. Since then, Tinariwen’s signature has been flowing Daraa (jackets) and tagelmust (Turbans) to stages around the world, winning a Grammy Award for their breakthrough 2011 record Tassili, and attracting other famous fans such as American rockers Kurt Vile and Cass McCombs.

The Haggar is an intergenerational celebration of their influence on Tuareg music. Instead of recording the album live in nature in the desert, which is the traditional Tuareg way, they found a safe haven in the Algerian city of Tamanrasset, a studio founded by the younger Tuareg group Imarhan.

“Ever since I heard Tinariwen’s second album on a ghetto blaster when I was a teenager, it has amazed me and inspired me to make my own music,” says Iyad Moussa Ben Abderrahmane, singer of the band Imarhan, in another video call. Imarhane recorded her first two albums in Paris, “but traveling made us lose energy and inspiration,” says Saddam, so they built their own studio in Tamanrasset. “It’s a city in Algeria with the largest Tuareg population, and here guitars are like soccer balls in Brazil – everyone has one. Except there’s no infrastructure for young people to sign up, they have to pay to go abroad instead. We knew we needed to make something here for ourselves.”

Naming the studio Aboogi after their 2022 album, Imarhan’s open-door spirit quickly attracted the elders of Tinariwen. “Although we don’t usually like to record within four walls, this will allow us to invite other artists for the first time,” Al-Husseini says. “We spent three weeks with a lot of people coming every day and exchanging ideas, like Saddam, and it became very exciting to bring all the generations together.”

Saddam appeared in several musical compositions, where he duetted on Tadonia and played guitar on Amiddenim Ehv Solan. Other guests include original member Liya ag Ablil, who has not recorded with the group in over 25 years; And Gonzalez in Emidiwan Takiadam. “When they approached me to collaborate, I immediately loved the demo and felt like singing in Spanish on it,” Gonzalez says.

Of particular interest are the backing vocals of female singers Wonou Walet Sidati and Nounou Kaola. “Eighty percent of traditional Tuareg music is female vocals, but over the past 10 years it has been very difficult to find female singers, because there was no place to teach them or encourage them – and once they grow up, they get married and become mothers instead,” says Saddam. “With Abuji, a lot more young women have reached out to us, curious to try singing or making music. Many of them have never seen a studio before but want to sing and this is very promising for the future.”

Many of these female singers, including Kaula, also appeared on Emrehan’s latest album, Essam. Taking Tinariwen’s expansive Tuareg sound a step further, the propulsive, rhythm-driven record incorporates not only electric guitar and hand percussion but also synths and electronic textures courtesy of French artist Emile Papandreou of the electro duo UTO. Saddam admits that he “had never heard electronic music before, but we wanted to try something new. Since then we have received good feedback from our community. This could be the next step in Tuareg music.”

Currently touring with Tinariwen as the youngest member of their generation-spanning band, Saddam has his sights set on the future of Tuareg culture. “We are only presenting a very small part of our heritage through these two bands, and there are a lot of aspects that need to be spread, such as imzad music” — one-stringed music traditionally played by women — “or Tamasheq poetry,” he says. “With Abuji, I want to have an archive where we can record all the Tuareg music and their way of life so that they are not forgotten.”

Meanwhile, Tinariwen sees their goal as continuing life on the road and recording it, to continue raising awareness of the plight of the Tuareg. “We are getting older now, some of us are almost 70 years old, so tourism has become more difficult,” Al-Husseini says. “But we want people to hear that our people and animals are being killed in our land, and we have to find a way to make peace. Until that happens, we have no choice but to keep singing.”