The Hammock Papers: Tinariwen.

21 August 2011

Tinariwen.

Last November, Ibrahim travelled to Djanet with five members of Tinariwen determined to nail down the simple acoustic sound and poetry of ishumar adventurers sitting around a campfire, sharing cigarettes, stories, songs and a guitar. This had always been the context in which Tinariwen's music was heard before they picked up electric guitars, added bass and percussion and went global. It was a return to core values and desert tranquillity that's bottled to perfection on Tassili.

They were later joined by American art house rockers Kyp Malone and Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio, who arrived at Djanet from New York. The pair had met Tinariwen a few years earlier at the Coachella festival in California and their friendship matured with further meetings and a special collaboration at the Womad festival in Abu Dhabi in 2010.

They were picked up in a Toyota 4x4 Land Cruiser by Eyadou Ag Leche, Tinariwen's bassist, and driven through the Saharan night to the campsite-cum-bush recording studio. Eyadou spiced up the journey by travelling down the obscure dirt tracks without any headlights on, a freaky experience for any fresh arrival.

Read the rest at The Guardian.

Tinariwen will release their latest album, Tassili, on August 30. Here's a song to learn and sing, "Tenere Taqhim Tossam" ...

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL