NOTHING’S NEW

Some time ago I promised to write more about musical discoveries I’d made. But at the time of that pledge, I’d temporarily forgotten how difficult it is to find bands that haven’t already been uncovered and written about by other media. Take for example Tinariwen, a Tuareg band from the Southern Sahara whose music sounds like a mixture of Ali Farka Touré's Mali blues crossed with the Wu-Tang Clan’s broken hip-Hop beats, albeit played on electric guitars and assorted percussion.
Their 2007 album “Aman Iman: Water Is Life” was nothing less than a revelation to me when I first heard it, and now that Tinariwen have released the follow-up “Imidiwan: Companions”, I’ve been quick to review it in glowing terms. In the course of my research, I discovered that the world music scene has been fawning over the band since a WOMAD appearance in 2001 and that Tinariwen have a history that spans more than two decades. So in fact I’m a late-comer to the fold. Still, that hasn’t deterred me from lauding Tinariwen for their virtues as instrumentalists and singers, as their music only gains in power and beauty on repeated listens. One can’t praise these records enough, even though many journalists have tried before me.