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CD SLEEVE NOTES – ‘Clychau Dibon’ by Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita
You don’t pair the greatest young harpist in Wales with one of the most innovative kora players from West Africa for the purposes of relaxation. Their music is too deep, full-blooded and fragile for that.
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MUSIC AND JIHAD IN MALI – “Mali without music is an impossibility”
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.
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THE CAUSES OF THE TOUAREG UPRISING OF JAN 2012 – The 4th roll of the Tamashek Dice
In truth, neither Ghadafi’s fall nor AQIM nor drugs and insecurity are the prime movers behind this latest revolt. They’re just fresh circumstances in a very old struggle.
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TINARIWEN – Guitar poets in Nueva York
Ibrahim battles through the show, smiling only once. His grave immobile presence is like a challenge to the hip bubbling New York crowd. To do what? To imagine a simplicity and a silence that their city will never know.
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LES AMBASSADEURS – Mali’s musical revolutionaries
Some bands score a few hits, some change the face of music and some end up defining a whole era. Les Ambassadeurs did all three.
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MALI RAP – Talking rhymes with Presidents and Putschistas
“Don’t be surprised if it explodes one day!” When I met Mylmo I knew nothing about him except that he was rapper who was performing on the main stage of the Festival on the Niger that very night. I interviewed him in an empty restaurant on the banks of the great river – most…
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SIDI TOURE – Easy to listen to and easy to love…
“As soon as people say ‘Toure’,” Sidi tells me, “they have a vision of a man with his head in Qu’ranic books.” Strange. For me, the vision is of a man in billowing blue robes dispensing liquid gold from a Gibson, a Taylor or a Takamine.
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NIGER MUSIC – Photo Essay
Portraits of Niger Musicians including Bombino, Etran Finatawa, Mamane Barka and Alhousseyni Anviolla taken in around Niamey in 2013
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SAHARA SOUL – Bassekou Kouyate, Tamikrest, Sidi Toure.
Listen to the spirits and they’ll tell you a deeper tale: that in that vast desert which outsiders are content to call a wasteland, there exists an endless calm, tranquillity and beauty that makes the nomad cry
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What do the Touareg want?
A nation or people rarely if ever think as one. In the case of the Touareg, difference and disharmony is exacerbated by their vast desert habitat and dispersed nomadic lifestyle
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GUNS, CIGARETTES AND SALAFI DREAMS – The roots of Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)
There are facts about Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) that are reassuringly hard and verifiable. The organisation exists. It’s run by Algerian Arabs. It’s made a home from home in the north east of Mali, on Tinariwen’s native earth. It earns millions and millions of euros from kidnapping westerners. No one knows exactly how much. Every now and then it chops the head off one of its victims. All in the service of a dream that has become a nightmare for the people of the Sahara
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DANYEL WARO – Mongrel and proud
Like the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley and Eminem, Danyel Waro has taken a style of music that wasn’t his by birthright and fashioned it into something new. The music in question is maloya.
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