Recently a friend turned me onto a band that he got into while living in southern Africa a few years ago. The video, which is a short film to accompany the track "Lulla", off of their latest album, Imidiwan: Companions, depicts part of the band's Saharan tapestry. Their debut album, The Radio Tisdas Sessions, which was recorded in the Malian desert and was released in 2001, brought them attention in Europe and in other parts outside of Africa.
The band describes themselves as, "initially a loose collection of displaced Touareg musicians centred around Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, who, although born in Mali, grew up in the refugee camps near the Malian border in Algeria and later around the southern Algerian city of Tamanrasset following the suppression of the Touareg people by the new independent Malian government in the early 1960’s. Coming together in the late 1970’s with a shared passion for everything from traditional Touareg music & poetry to western rock and pop artists such as Hendrix, Santana, Bob Marley and Led Zeppelin, the collective steadily built their reputation in and around the Sahara desert."
Posted by Shilpa Nadhan
