{"id":317,"date":"2018-02-05T01:48:42","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T06:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s265039441.onlinehome.us\/philpaine\/?p=317"},"modified":"2018-12-25T18:29:55","modified_gmt":"2018-12-25T23:29:55","slug":"the-rough-guide-to-the-music-of-the-sahara-north-african-groove","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=317","title":{"rendered":"The Rough Guide to the Music of the Sahara \/ North African Groove"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"18-02-05<\/a><\/p>\n

These two albums form a fine intro\u00adduc\u00adtion to a world of music which is now famil\u00adiar to Euro\u00adpeans, but still hid\u00adden from most lis\u00adten\u00aders in North Amer\u00adica. The Sahara Desert has often been com\u00adpared to a sea \u2015 blend\u00ading influ\u00adences and stim\u00adu\u00adlat\u00ading the dis\u00adparate cul\u00adtures along its shores. The sailors are the tribes of the desert: the Tuareg, the enig\u00admatic Teda, and the var\u00adi\u00adous \u201carab\u201d tribes, such as the Ikoku Nema\u00addi, Bithan, and She\u00adwa (these last all speak vari\u00adeties of Ara\u00adbic incom\u00adpre\u00adhen\u00adsi\u00adble to stan\u00addard Ara\u00adbic speak\u00aders, and even to the speak\u00aders of col\u00adlo\u00adquial Maghribi Ara\u00adbic in Moroc\u00adco or Alge\u00adria. Cul\u00adtur\u00adally and bio\u00adlog\u00adi\u00adcally, they are of the Sahara, like the Tuareg, not mere\u00adly trans\u00adplanted badaw\u012b <\/em>[ \u0628\u062f\u0648\u064a ] from Arabia.).\"18-02-05<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span>If you have read Frank Herbert\u2019s Dune<\/em>, you can get some notion of the Tuareg. The Fre\u00admen tribes in that nov\u00adel were pat\u00adterned on them. They speak lan\u00adguages in the Berber fam\u00adily, dim\u00adly relat\u00aded to Ancient Egypt\u00adian. \u201cBerbers\u201d refers to the seden\u00adtary peo\u00adple who inhab\u00adit ancient towns and cities of North Africa (St. Augus\u00adtine was the most famous Berber), but the desert Tuareg are relat\u00aded to them lin\u00adguis\u00adti\u00adcally. Noth\u00ading can real\u00adly con\u00advey the stark sever\u00adity, and the poet\u00adry of life among the \u201cpeo\u00adple of the blue veil\u201d, but you can get a hint of it from the band Tinari\u00adwen, who aban\u00addoned desert war\u00adfare with the cease\u00adfire at Tim\u00adbuktu to start a record\u00ading career in the late 1990\u2019s. Oth\u00ader Tuareg groups, Chet F\u00e9w\u00ader, Kel Tin Lok\u00adi\u00adenne, and the Tar\u00adtit Ensem\u00adble, are also present on the album. They rep\u00adre\u00adsent tribes far dis\u00adtant from each oth\u00ader. Some of the \u201cArab\u201d tribes are present, as well. The towns on the shore of the sand are rep\u00adre\u00adsented by a vari\u00adety of groups and singers (Mal\u00adouma, Com\u00adpag\u00adnie Jel\u00adlouli, Sahraoui Bachir), and there is one singer in the Song\u00adhai lan\u00adguage from Tim\u00adbuktu, Seck\u00adou Ma\u00ef\u00adga. The remote Teda of the Tibesti are not rep\u00adre\u00adsented \u2015 a sad lack, because their evoca\u00adtive \u201ccall and answer\u201d odes, between female singers and male play\u00aders of the stringed keleli<\/em> are haunt\u00adingly beau\u00adti\u00adful. But the Teda have not been drawn into the glob\u00adal com\u00admu\u00adnity in the way that the Tuareg have sud\u00addenly been, and still remain inaccessible.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

All this stuff is much more exot\u00adic than the Ra\u00ef<\/em> music and the Egypt\u00adian pop music on the Puta\u00admayo World Music col\u00adlec\u00adtion North African Groove<\/em>. Dis\u00adcos all over Europe have become filled with Ra\u00ef\u2019s won\u00adder\u00adful back-beat-heavy com\u00adbi\u00adna\u00adtion of tra\u00addi\u00adtional North African musics with Amer\u00adi\u00adcan funk, sal\u00adsa, French cabaret, and every\u00adthing else imag\u00adin\u00adable. Super\u00adstars such as Cheb Mami (singing the delight\u00adful \u201cViens Habibi\u201d) and Khaled are rep\u00adre\u00adsented on this album, and it is a good intro\u00adduc\u00adtion to the North African pop scene.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you lis\u00adten to these two albums one after the oth\u00ader, you will get a sense of the intri\u00adcacy and his\u00adtoric depth of this musi\u00adcal land\u00adscape. It would be like play\u00ading an archa\u00adic moun\u00adtain dul\u00adcimer bal\u00adlad from West Vir\u00adginia, \u201cSaint James Infir\u00admary\u201d, \u201cCity of New Orleans\u201d, Chuck Berry\u2019s \u201cRoll Over Beethoven\u201d, and a Hen\u00addrix solo, one after another.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These two albums form a fine intro\u00adduc\u00adtion to a world of music which is now famil\u00adiar to Euro\u00adpeans, but still hid\u00adden from most lis\u00adten\u00aders in North Amer\u00adica. The Sahara Desert has often been com\u00adpared to a sea \u2015 blend\u00ading influences \u2026<\/p>\n

Read more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[947,1497],"tags":[981,1054,1053,1061,1062,1055,1059,1057,1060,1058,1056],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c-listening","category-ci-listening-2018","tag-folk-music","tag-music-of-north-africa","tag-music-of-the-sahara","tag-north-african-groove","tag-rai-music","tag-sahara","tag-tartit-ensemble","tag-teda","tag-tibesti","tag-tinariwen","tag-tuareg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9528,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions\/9528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}