A mujahid in northern Mali.

It ranges from the almost banal: a bunch of mates in the eastern Malian town of Gao are fingered by the Islamic Police. The Bob Marley tape they’ve been enjoying is impounded and instead they’re given one by Saudi Arabia’s star Quranic chanter, Sheik Abderrahmane Soudais. “No more Satanic sounds now lads,” the policeman says. “You have to listen to this.”

To the gut-slicingly terrifying: Seven men in a Toyota pickup draw up outside the house of a guitar player in Kidal, the far flung Malian desert town that is home to members of the Grammy Award winning band Tinariwen. Luckily, the musician, whose name cannot be given for security reasons, is away. “Well, if you speak to him,” one of the AK47 toting militiamen says to his sister, “tell him that if he ever shows his face in this town again, we’ll cut off all the fingers he uses to play his guitar with.” Then they drag years of patiently accumulated musical equipment out of the house – guitars, amps, speakers, mics and a drum kit – douse it all with petrol, and set it ablaze.

When a rabble of different Islamist groups took control of northern Mali in April this year everybody knew that the region’s rich and vivid music scene would suffer. But no one imagined that it would almost cease to exist, not in Mali, a country that, like Jamaica or Ireland, only really lives in the global imagination thanks to its culture and music.

“Culture is our petrol,” says Toumani Diabate, the world famous Malian kora player who has collaborated with Damon Albarn and Björk, to name but a few. “Music is our mineral wealth. There isn’t a single major music prize in the world today that hasn’t been won by a Malian artist.”

“Music regulates the life of every Malian,” adds Cheikh Tidiane Seck, a prolific Malian musician and producer. “From the cradle to the grave. From ancient times right up to today. A Mali without music? No…I mean…give me another one!!”

International observers claim that the leaders of the three armed Islamic groups who now control the northern Malian cities of Timbuktu, Kidal and Gao respectively, are motivated by money and power rather the dream of a Caliphate in the Sahel founded on piety and abnegation. Strong ties between these groups and the less than holy interests of major drug-traffickers and arms smugglers exist beyond doubt. But many of the mujahedeen that have zoned in on the conflict from all over the Muslim world are fired by an unquestionable religious zeal. The same goes for Iyad Ag Ghaly, ex-rebel leader, Touareg strong man and born again Salafist, who founded the Touareg-lead Ansar ud-Dine movement at the end of last year.

“He believes in what he’s doing,” says Manny Ansar, director of the world famous Festival in the Desert that has been taking place every January in and around Timbuktu and Kidal since 2001. “And that’s what frightens me. I’m not convinced that he wants to kill everyone who is not a Muslim, like the people in Al Qaida do, but I’ve seen him giving up the fruits of this life for God.”

Back in the 1990s, before he succumbed to the preaching of the Pakistani proselytising movement Tablighi Jama’at, Iyad Ag Ghali liked to smoke cigarettes and hang out with musicians from Tinariwen. He even composed songs and poems to love, rebellion and the beauty of his desert home. Now music, and with it a major source of communal cohesion and well being, has either disappeared or gone underground throughout the territory under his control.

An official decree banning all western music was issued on August 22d by a heavily bearded Islamist spokesperson in the city of Gao. “We don’t want the music of Satan. Quranic verses must take its place. Sharia demands it,” it went. The ban comes in the context of a horrifically literal and gratuitous application of Sharia law in all aspects of daily life. Militiamen are cutting off the hands and feet of thieves or stoning adulterers. Smokers, alcohol drinkers and women who aren’t properly attired are being publicly whipped. As one well-known Touareg musician from Kidal told me, “There’s a lack of joy. No one is dancing. There are no parties. Everybody’s under this kind of spell. It’s strange.”

“People think that the problem is new,” says Manny Ansar, “but the menace of Al Qaida started to have an effect on us in 2007. That’s when the Al Qaida people started to appear in the desert. They came to the nomad camps near Essakane [the beautiful dunes to the west of Timbuktu where the Festival in the Desert used to be held] and at first they were pleasant and said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re Muslims like you.’ Then they began to say, ‘We have a common enemy, which is the west.’ That’s when I understood that things were going to get difficult.”

Remarkably, Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) never targeted the festival or any of the thousands of westerners who braved the journey to attend it. According to Manny Ansar, some people put down this to the fact that his tribe, the Kel Ansar, are said to be descended directly from the Prophet Mohammed and are highly revered. “Others even thought that we cast spells to block their route,” he says with a wry laugh. In truth, AQIM knew that if they wanted to keep the locals sweet and compliant, they were well advised not to mess with the Kel Ansar.

Not all music events were so blessed. Returning from the Tamadacht festival near the eastern town of Anderamboukane in January 2009, the British tourist Ediwn Dyer was kidnapped and sold to AQIM, who beheaded him four months later because the British government refused to pay a ransom for his release. This tragedy forced The Festival in the Desert to move into the safe confines of Timbuktu city limits in 2010.

This year in January, no doubt the last edition of the festival to be held in Timbuktu for a while took place in an atmosphere of high alert following recent kidnappings and the murder of a German tourist by Al Qaida. The event was attended by Tinariwen, a host of other Touareg and Malian musicians, and Bono. “I was impressed by Bono’s courage and that of his team,” Manny tells me. “He asked the soldiers who were assigned to protect him to leave him be and let him roam around the town freely or go and drink tea out on the dunes. But I wondered if I wasn’t a bit mad myself to let him do that. I mean, Bono, kidnapped! Imagine that.” La Maison, the hotel in Timbuktu where Bono and entourage stayed is now the headquarters of the city’s Islamic Tribunal.

Manny felt like giving up when the rebellion broke out a few days after the end of the festival. But after talking to many musicians, as well as friends and international backers, he decided to organise a Caravan of Peace and Unity that will tour West Africa and visit refugee camps in February next year. He’ll also be promoting the Festival in the Desert in Exile in Europe, the Middle East, the US and elsewhere. “It’s my way of fighting back,” he says. “Before our music was heard in Essakane. Now it’ll be heard in all the big festivals in the world. So it’s the opposite of what the Islamists want. It’s our victory and their defeat.”

Meanwhile, almost all the musicians in the north have fled the country like more than 500,000 of their fellow countrymen, most of who languish in refugee camps in Algeria, Mauritania, Niger or Burkina Faso. It’s the biggest humanitarian crisis the Sahel has ever known. “There’s no music up there any more,” says Vieux Farka Toure, son of the king of the West African blues, the late Ali Farka Toure. “You can’t switch on a radio or a TV, even at home.”

The town of Niafunké just south west of Timbuktu, where Ali Farka was mayor for many years, is now under Islamist control. “I know that if Ali were to awake from his tomb today,” says Afel Bocoum, Ali Farka’s former sidekick and Damon Albarn’s partner on the 2002 Mali Music project, “he would just go straight back into it. He would die twice.” Both Afel Bocoum and Vieux Farka Toure have fled south to the safety of the Malian capital Bamako with their families.

Down south however, music is also in crisis, for different but related reasons. The military coup that toppled President Toure on March 23^rd and kissed goodbye to one of Africa’s most lauded democracies has left the capital fearful and economically depressed. “People just aren’t used to meeting soldiers in the street,” says Adam Thiam, one of Mali’s leading journalists, “so they tend to stay at home.”

Many live music venues in the capital, like Le Diplomat, the espace culturel where Toumani Diabate and his Symmetric Orchestra used to play every weekend, have closed down. The same goes for hotels and restaurants, starved of their once plentiful foreign tourist clientele. Nightclubs and weddings are still thriving but the trend is to save money by hiring sound systems and DJs rather than live musicians. “People use what they earn to feed themselves, not to have fun,” says Bassekou Kouyate.

But in West Africa nowadays, when the going gets tough, the rappers get going. Like Y’en A Marre, the rap collective that ignited nationwide debate during the election crisis in Senegal last year, rappers in Mali have stepped up to denounce political skulduggery, Islamism and military rule.

“I don’t give a f**k what they say,” was Malian rapper Amkoullel’s terse answer to my question about the Islamist ban on music in the north. “We won’t let them get away with it. We don’t need them to teach us how to be Muslims. We’re a secular tolerant country, where everyone declares their religion according to their feeling. And in any case, they know that a Mali without music is an impossibility.”

Amkoullel set up his own pressure group of rappers, activists and friends called Plus Jamais Ça (Never Again). So far he’s released a couple of videos, including one called ‘SOS’, which has become a You Tube hit. It’s also been censored by the state broadcaster ORTM, which is still under the heavy hand of the military.

“We had this feeling that a heavy blow had been dealt to democracy,” Amkoullel says of the March 23^rd putsch. “And it had been done in a period of popular disillusion. It’s as if in the collective consciousness, democracy was a failure in Mali.” Like Les Sofas de la Republique, the other rap collective raising the standard in rhyme for unity, democracy, peace and good governance, Amkoullel and his team have been organising demonstrations, debates and gigs. He’s also received three death threats.

“I knew that our phones were being bugged,” he tells me. “Then I got this call that was like ‘Yeah…we’re watching you, so you’d better calm down or take the consequences.’ The second message wasn’t from the same person. ‘You’re talking too much’, they said. ‘Shut up or you’ll disappear and won’t understand a thing.’ That was much clearer!”

All the musicians I spoke to agreed; Mali without music would be like Egypt without cotton, a bird without wings, a man without a soul. “I’m a Muslim, but Sharia isn’t my thing,” says Rokia Traore, one of Mali’s most famous international stars. “If I couldn’t go up on stage anymore, I would cease to exist. And without music, Mali will cease to exist.”

Andy Morgan.  (c) 2012

First published in The Guardian (edited version) – June 2012

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MUSIC

CULTURE

& CONFLICT

IN MALI

By Andy Morgan

AVAILABLE FROM:

FREEMUSE BOOKSTORE
iTUNES BOOKSTORE
AMAZON

“‘Andy takes you on a clear and considered journey through the complexities of modern Mali. A must read for all those interested in the culture of West Africa.” DAMON ALBARN.

“…one of the few positives to come out of the occupation of the northern two-thirds of Mali by armed jihadist groups in 2012 was the informed analysis of Andy Morgan. Now his writing on the crisis has grown into a book. His final chapter is required reading, a tour de force of both profound humanity and intellectual clarity.” NIGEL WILLIAMSON, Songlines. 5/5 Stars.

“Andy Morgan brings his skills as a journalist combined with deep insight gained as manager of Tinariwen to sieve through the shifting sands of Saharan culture in this fine book.”  IAN BIRRELL, Daily Mail & founder of Africa Express

“Does a wonderful job of not only detailing what happened during that awful period, but explaining why it did, and how it could easily happen again if things don’t change.” RICHARD MARCUS, Blogcritics.

“Essential reading for anyone who has been touched by Saharan music. It gives a clear and gripping picture of what it’s like to live through the chaos of a 21st century conflict…A really valuable piece of work.”  JUSTIN ADAMS, guitarist, UK

“Morgan’s book is an excellent examination of the contradictory forces in the “war on culture” currently led by Islamists in Mali. Music, Culture and Conflict in Mali represents an essential resource for anyone, scholar or layperson, seeking to grasp the Malian crisis, contemporary West African culture, and the impact of extremist movements on cultural production.”  ERIC J SCHMIDT, Ethnomusicology Review, USA.

“Andy Morgan has written a book about the Tuareg people that brings us up close with them in their moments of horror and disgust during the reign of the jihadists in northern Mali.” BARBARA WORLEY, Senior lecturer of Anthropology at University of Massachussetts, Boston, USA

“A wonderful, sad and powerful read! I’m emotionally spent! This goes far further than an examination of the effect on musical life in Mali. It reaches into all aspects of Malian life, history and future. Most powerful though are the personal stories. This is an important record.”  ANN MACKEIGAN, Executive Producer, CBC Music, Canada.

“The book is brilliant. Andy Morgan has solid experience, partly inside the music industry, not least as manager of Tinariwen. On top of that he’s a writer who knows his stuff backwards. It’s a treat to be introduced to the whole conflict in such a competent way and get first hand experience of what happens when the prophecy of The Doors is fulfilled.”  TORBEN HOLLEUFER, Gaffa magazine, Denmark.

“Many thanks for this magnificent work. Even though it’s in English, I’ve almost read it all, it’s so well written and accessible.”  OUSMANE DIARRA, author, Mali.

“An absolutely fantastic read and an invaluable primer on the volatile Malian situation of the last years. ” CHRIS ECKMAN, Musician and Producer (Dirt Music, Tamikrest), Slovenia.

READ THESE EXTRACTS:

“We don’t want Satan’s music!” – Scenes of musical life under Shari’a Law

Music in the red zone – The Festival in the Desert and the advance of Islamism in the north

“We have come here to teach you the true faith,” – Vandalism and destruction along the great fault line of the Sahel

Tisrawt – The epic tale of a theatre company from northern Mali

The post NEW BOOK – Music, Culture & Conflict in Mali appeared first on Andy Morgan Writes.

Festival Security in 2003. (c) Kate Morgan.

The article in Harpers and Queen came as a shock.  “Exotic.”   “Move over Glastonbury.”  “The most remote music festival in the world.”   “The romance.”  To see an event that was born in a spirit of deranged adventure mixed with post-conflict shoestring survival previewed in magazine that epitomizes affluence and the charmed life…I had to double take and double take again.  Six years ago, under the haunting light of a lunar eclipse, the first Festival in the Desert took place on a wide stony plain near the village of Tin Essako, in the deepest desert of the southern Sahara.  We were a motley assortment of musicians, technicians, journalists, ambassadors, duchesses, tourists and friends who travelled to that unfeasibly remote and yet utterly seductive spot to witness this renaissance of cultural pride and hope.  Our hosts, the nomadic Touareg of the Sahara, had latched onto the idea of using their culture to try and extricate themselves from years of rebellion, drought, isolation and underdevelopment.  The Festival was only a means to this end.  We were only a footnote in this wider project.  Harpers and Queen was very far from anyone’s mind.

The humble seed that was planted back in January 2001 has grown into a media bougainvillea of global proportions.  The take-off point came in January 2003 at the third edition of the Festival near the tiny village called Esskane, in the dunes west of Timbuktu.  LoJo, a group from Angers in France who were so instrumental in setting up the first edition of the Festival, came with a team of technicians.  The Sfinks Festival in Belgium added another crew.  They erected a stage of dreams which welcomed a procession of the Sahara’s finest: Tinariwen, Tartit, Tarbiat, Oumou Sangare, Ali Farka Toure, Afel Bocoum, Haira Arby, Seydoum Ould Eide and many more.  A smattering of European ‘names’, including Robert Plant and Ludovico Einaudi, added a frisson of celebrity status.

The 250 strong contingent of whiteys stumbled around in the cream-coloured talcum-powder sand, drenched with sweat and wide-eyed with wonder.  The 1000 or so locals strutted their finest robes, their fanciest turbans, their most magnificent camels and the unearthly sounds of their traditional music.   A CD was recorded on a portastudio set up in a rusting old shipping container.   It sold like hot cakes, and a DVD followed.  Suddenly the Festival became a byword for extreme musical adventurism.  Attendance became a test of sang-froid and derring-do.  Big tour companies started offering all-in packages including first class tent accommodation.   The various ministries in the Malian capital Bamako began to realise that the northern deserts, rather than being a god-forsaken sink hole full of bandits and terrorists, could actually become a very bankable asset  in terms of tourism and cultural kudos.   All this success descended on the bewildered organisers like a sandstorm, at once epic, exhilarating and radically disorientating.

The painful truth is that speedy success dragged along a heap of uninvited problems in its caravan train.  The Malian authorities exerted uncomfortable pressure on Manny Ansar, the President of the EFES Association which was responsible for organising the event. It became official policy to keep the festival alive at all costs, despite spiralling debt, despite the pressure of alien crowds on the fragile desert environment, despite the growing discontent of certain Touareg who felt that the event was being hi-jacked and turned into a kind of Arabian Nights meets Woodstock Of The Sands fantasia.   No one locally could imagine that the Festival was anything other than immensely rich.  But the opposite was true.  The expense of freighting every single piece of equipment and infrastructure in huge burly Mann trucks over the atrocious track that links Essakane to Timbuktu had well nigh bankrupted the event.  Budgets were dismissed as fiction.  Grumbling suspicion became widespread.  Tinariwen, the musical heroes of the rebellion that had shaken desert society to the core in the early 1990s, went back home to Kidal in the far northeast of Mali to set up their own festival, Les Nuits Sahariennes d’Essouk.  They were pining for a return to the original mission; a celebration of desert culture, an event that brings the various different Touareg confederations, from Mali, Niger, Algeria and Libya together for three days of parlaying, problem solving and partying.

The Touareg are unified by a common language, Tamashek, and a common culture rooted in the Berber subsoil of North and West Africa.   But historically the various tribes and factions have often been rivals or even sworn enemies.   It was the rebellion of 1990 to 1991 that broke down these old enmities and forged something approaching a common Touareg destiny.  But old traditions die hard.  As the Festival at Essakane became the talk of the desert, the Touareg of Menaka, Tessalit,  Aguelhoc, In Gall or Agadez wanted a piece of the action.  Why should all the glory go the Kel Antessar, the tribe that rule the Timbuktu region, who have always been the most adept at playing politics and furthering their cause in the corridors of power in Bamako?   After all the original Festival in the Desert was nothing more than one of the Touareg’s annual traditional gatherings, a bit like our country fairs of yore, opened up to participants and audiences from all over the world with the help of some funding, a website, and friends in Europe.  In January of this year there were no less that six desert Festivals in northern Mali: at Essakane, in Essouk, Ashawadj, Gourma, Aguelhoc and Tessalit.   It’s no longer a question of THE Festival in the Desert, but of The FESTIVALS in the Desert.

At this year’s Essouk festival, about 150 nomad tents covered in terracotta stained hides were arranged in a wide crescent along a ridge near the ancient ruins of a medieval metropolis.  The setting was arrestingly grand.  On the sandy plain below was a tiny concrete stage, backed by a huge open sided truck.  The crowds were thinner than they might have been.  Local people were constrained by the fact that the annual feast of Tabeski was only a few days away, and they needed the time to get home and prepare for it.  Tourists had been turned off by a completely misguided message on the Foreign Office website advising against travel in the northern deserts of Mali.   Statistically, the area is about ten times safer than London, Bristol, or the centre of Trowbridge on a Saturday night.  The old myth about the desert being a parched hell-hole inhabited only by Touareg freebooters and renegade Al-Qaida elements still holds swa y in Bamako, and apparently also in the Foreign ministries of the UK, France and the USA.

That’s why the Festivals in the Desert are so important.  They give a region previously ravaged by conflict and insecurity the chance to show a peaceful face to the world.   They give the chance for the Touareg to prove that far from being bandits, they are a simply another African people in the pressure cooker of enforced modernisation, desperately trying to adapt their millennial nomadic culture to the merciless realities of a modern globalised world.  They give adventurous westerners the opportunity to travel to one of the most beautiful places on earth, and hear music whose alien splendour is as difficult to conceive as it is stunning.  And they give the world a chance to ponder how a friendly cultural get together can being some much needed pride, hope and confidence, where bullets and politically inspired machinations have previously failed.

Andy Morgan.  (c) 2006
First published in The Independent – Mar 2006

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