Interview with Alghabass Ag Intalla, head of the Islamic...
Guns, cigarettes & Salafi dreams: the roots of AQIM
BALOJI (Part 1) – Super sorcerer of Belgo-congolese rap
DANYEL WARO – Say it loud, mongrel and proud!
Alghabass Ag Intalla is undoubtedly one of the most important players in the drama...
There are facts about Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) that are reassuringly...
Once a member of Starflam, one of Belgium’s most successful hip hop crews, Baloji...
Like the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley and Eminem, Danyel Waro has taken a style...
My new book MUSIC, CULTURE & CONFLICT IN MALI takes an in-depth look at the crisis that overtook Mali in January 2012 and lead to a ten-month occupation of the northern two-thirds of the country by armed jihadi groups. The book examines the roots of those tumultuous events and their ef- fect on...
Read More »
BOOK EXTRACT: “Tisrawt is a microcosm of Touareg society,” Melissa explains. “That’s to say, it is a group of people who come from many different clans. Some are pro-MNLA. Some are pro Ansar ud-Dine. Some are pro-Mali. Others say that it’s all nonsense. And the aim is to understand each other, to live...
Read More »
BOOK EXTRACT: In important ways, the scenes of vandalism and destruction that were played out in Timbuktu following the Salafist takeover in April 2012 weren’t new at all. There was something very old about them. Mostly white Arabic or Hassaniya speaking men from the northern deserts were ‘teaching’ the blacks how to worship...
Read More »
BOOK EXTRACT: Life in the early 1990s was convivial. There was music. Women felt free to come and go. Some people smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol. The bonds between those young Touareg, their music and their culture seemed strong and unbreakable. No one quite knows why some senior Touareg figures from the northeast,...
Read More »
BOOK EXTRACT: In Gao, a group of teenagers sat around a ghetto blaster listening to Bob Marley. A Landcruiser pick-up loaded with tooled-up Islamic police came by and seeing the reggae fans, stopped and accosted them. “This music is haram!” – forbidden by Islamic law – said one of the MUJAO men as...
Read More »
The conversation won’t be easy. But listen to the spirits there in the music and they’ll tell you a deeper tale. They’ll tell you that in that vast desert...
Read More »
When the record producer Nick Gold traveled to Cuba in the early 1990s and fell in love with a cassette by the late great Ñico Saquito, the Afro Cuban...
Read More »
“Africa needs to speak out right now,” says Ousco calmly over a crackling phone line from Bamako. “Africa must stop crying.” His words are a neat little summary of...
Read More »
It’s this gentle yet luminous spirituality that makes Cheikh Lo’s music so unique, injecting its boundary-busting mix of Cuban, Congolese, Senegalese mbalax and international pop flavours with a tender...
Read More »
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s Tinariwen who created the path,” declares Ousmane Ag Mossa, frizzy-locked leader of Tamikrest, in a pre-emptive strike against a thousand inevitable questions. “But...
Read More »
They say that takamba has its origins in a neighbourhood of the same name situated on the edge of the small town of Témera, up-river north of Gao, on the road to Bourem. Its driving force is the unmistakable takamba rhythm which pulses on the boom and bip before lurching at the end of...
Yabous Productions, the non-profit Palestinian organisation behind the Jerusalem festival, has been organizing cultural events in Jerusalem and the West Bank since 1995. After the second intifada started in 2001, they were one of the few cultural organisations in Palestine to survive the Israeli crackdown. Their small offices in Arabic East Jerusalem buzz with...
As the most famous Malian woman alive, Oumou Sangare embodies this alluring dichotomy like no one else. She’s the epitome of tough femininity; beautiful, elegant, determined, independent, talented…and, well, hard.
The word ‘nomad’ might make us dream about freedom, but in the southern Sahara...
Once a guitarist himself, Socklo now makes about 2 to 3 instruments per week,...
In terms of music and culture, the Sahara is like an inland sea, where...
It’s this gentle yet luminous spirituality that makes Cheikh Lo’s music so unique, injecting...
Tweet Look at Omar in his sheer white body-length jellabiya and gingham keffiya, with...
That’s why the Festivals in the Desert are so important. They give a...
But where exactly is Rachid Taha today? With the success of ‘Voilà...
Arab. Algerian. Berber. Woman. Muslim. Poet. Musician. ...
Tweet It was one of those perfect moments, when passion burns up the concept,...
In that same moment of dream-like calm, not more than two hundred kilometres away...
Africa doesn’t need our pity. Africa demands and deserves our admiration and...
This battle for recognition in the hierarchy of the hard is the subject of...
