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Call it desert blues or Touareg rock'n'roll, it's the hypnotic, addictive groove which makes it so easily appealing to a mainstream audience unfamiliar with African music. After a few listens to Ishumar you'll be hooked!
As with Tinariwen, the electric guitar is the most important instrument here. Coupled with singer-songwriter and guitarist Ag Keyna's rebel attitude it makes for perfect fare for a rock audience, too. Ag Keyna is a former Touareg freedom fighter. The Touaregs are a Berber ethnic group, whose immense homeland covers parts of Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Libya. Clashes between Touareg freedom fighters and Mali's and Niger's military resulted in thousands of casualties and Ag Keyna himself was seriously wounded in 1993 and taken to France. There he continued his fight through music. He got together with his niece, percussionist and haunting vocalist Aminatou Goumar and the French multi-instrumentalist/ producer Dan Levy who whilst not on the cover can be seen as the third member of Toumast (meaning 'identity').
The main criticism slung at this genre is that it can get a bit samey but the tracks on Ishumar - all sung in Berber Arabic and mainly about the Touareg struggles - include enough musical variety to avoid being remotely boring. Particularly dazzling are the foot-stomping opening track ''Ikalane Walegh'' and ''Maraou Oran (For 12 Moons)'', which Ag Keyna wrote when hearing that 12 of his fellow freedom fighters had been assassinated.
Ishumar may not be breaking new ground but it's certainly an outstanding album that will undoubtedly add to the popularity of desert blues and hopefully continue introducing new audiences to African music. --Ilka Schlockermann
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
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The main personnel behind Toumast were also forged in the civil wars of the '90s, and their music contains the same soulfulness born of such troubled times. There is the desert-blues electric guitar backed by more traditional instruments, the hypnotic rhythms, and bewitching vocals - again all as in Tinariwen's sound.
But there are also differences - the music has a particularly spontaneous feel, soulful but fairly upbeat. In fact there is something about the overall production sound, and the way that the band is happy to simply carrying on playing, stripping the sound down then building it up again, without even the vocals accompanying, that reminds me of a 70s funk outfit.
This album is full of life and warmth, and unerringly conjures up pictures of (cliche alert...) dancing around a desert campfire, making it a definite must-buy for anyone interested in having the sound of the desert in their home.
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