Groupe Imzad

Buy: https://tamikrest.bandcamp.com/album/chatma

'Chatma' is the new album by Tuareg rockers Tamikrest. The album is a fully persuasive sonic document and is filled with sober reflection, moral indignation, musical experimentation, cultural celebration - and the kick of rock and roll. 'Chatma' translates as "Sisters" and the band have dedicated the album, in their own words, to "the courage of the Tuareg women, who have ensured both their children's survival and the morals of their fathers and brothers."

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twitter.com/Tamikrest
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Chatma

Tisnant An Chatma

Tamikrest - Tisnant an Chatma

Kok Adounia par Bay Dana de Imzad group

Imidiwen c'est "Les amis de mon pays"
El Hassen dit Mahmoud lance un appel aux amis de son pays... Un appel ultime: 
Amis de mon pays
Aimons notre jeunesse
... L'ignorance détruit
La haine n'apporte rien"
Tous droits de reproduction sont interdits. Copyright Sauver l'Imzad 2013

Imidiwen par Aneslem El Hassen  Groupe IMZAD

Nakaned kel Tamasheq.... (Nous les kel Tamasheq)
Nous les kel tamasheq
Notre terre le Sahara
De toi nous venons
A toi nous revenons
Nos sages et nos ancêtres
Sont les gardiens de notre culture."
Tous droits de reproduction sont interdits. Copyrighta Sauver l'Imzad- 2013

Nakaned Kel Tamasheq  par Aneslem El Hasse - Groupe Imzad

Abdellah nous dit:
Quand les larmes coulent, la souffrance en est la cause
Je veux accompagner la lune vers l'ouest, elle me suivra
Le chagrin qui s'incruste en moi est une épine dans ma poitrine..."
Tous droits réservés et reproduction interdite. Copyright Sauver l'Imzad 2013

Imetawen par Abdellah Rami du groupe Imzad

Le titre "Mon âme vit dans le ténéré" nous raconte Aneslem El Hassen dit Mahmoud...
Mon âme vit dans le ténéré, mon corps vit en société
Je ne peux faire confiance à personne, sauf à l'amour sincère
Je pense à ces pauvres gens aux faux visages
Ils ne savent pas qu'un jour, la vie les dévoilera.
Tous droits réservés et reproduction interdites. Copyright Sauver l'Imzad.

Azagha manin Ténéré par Aneslem du Groupe Imzad

aUtOdiDakt & Super Super aka Music To Make Babies To give Tamikrest's Desert Rock groover a boogie stompin Cosmic Disco Re-Edit.

Tamikrest - Aratan N Tinariwen (MTMBT Re-Edit)

Intidaw-Tamiditin welli

Abdallah Ag Elhousseini- Ténéré (Acoustique)

TERAKAFT – Alone (Ténéré)

‚Alone‘ was born out of a need to maintain sanity in times of broken dreams and lies. It might be their most rock oriented album to date but at the same time it is their most poetic. Five years ago with their album "Aratan N Azawad" and even the follow up "Kel Tamasheq", Terakaft was still full of hope, things had started to change. Today the soil that was supposed to blossom is burnt by selfishness and rivalry. 

„There are too many characters in the picture, too many chiefs and not enough people“, says Diara when asked about the political developments in the last years. He used to sing political songs back in the days in his rebel youth when he was still playing guitar with Tinariwen. Nowadays he is only watching with a new feeling growing inside him: “Ténéré”, which is the title he gave to this album, and which translates to: “Alone”. Back in the days when they were sitting in the dunes drinking tea with big hopes for the future, singing their songs into the night, his nephew Sanou was sitting next to him, still a young boy. Occasionally the uncle would hand his guitar to the nephew, so he could  play along with the others. Just before the international success story of Tinariwen started, Diara got stuck on his way to Bamako a missed flight and his place in Tinariwen was taken. Meanwhile Sanou had set up his own band Terakaft. Today Diara and Sanou are the backbone of Terakaft: the guardians of desert blues. Diara is the spirit of the band, as strong as a rock. Sanou – his nephew - is the heart of Terakaft. He brings the life to its spirit. Diara the elder, lays out heavy rhythms pulsing through his guitar. Sanou has become the natural heir to the sound of “assouf”, with his intense rock riffs and an up-lifting attitude towards life.

‚Alone‘ is the 5th album of Terakaft. It was produced by Justin Adams who is one of the musicians from Europe who has delved deep into Tuareg music in the last years. Adams is known as a musician and producer through his work with Robert Plant, Tinariwen and Juldeh Camara. He has geared up "The Caravan" to reach new shores and hit the dancefloors. In these troubled times, they have made an album together, that presents the deep Saharan rhythms as a vital contemporary heartbeat. Standing on the ruins of their peoples dreams they sing to their brothers and sisters about true friendship and tolerance.

Tafouk Tele

Elbe BAM BAM

Terakaft - Aratan N Azawad

“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 the way I see it, if younger bands don’t come through, then Touareg music will eventually die. They created the path and now it’s up to us to walk down it and create the future.”

Ousmane was born twenty-seven years ago in a village called Tin-Zaouaten, a solitary speck squeezed up against Mali’s northeastern border with Algeria. It’s a remote marginal place. Or to put it another way: there’s distant, there’s remote and beyond both of those there’s Tin-Zaouaten. 

To an outsider, the village would appear to be nothing more than a motley collection of one storey adobe and breeze-block houses, huddling together for protection against the burning sun, the black rocky hills and the lonely immensity of the surrounding desert. But to Ousmane, it’s home. 

Like its ‘neighbour’ Tessalit, two hundred and fifty kilometres to the west, Tin-Zaouaten is blessed with a water table that lurks benignly just below the surface of the gritty soil. Dig a few metres and you can usually find water in abundance. That’s why Tin-Zaouaten, or ‘Tinza’ for short, is famed in the desert for its gardens and garden produce. Ousmane’s father Mossa was born a nomad out in the bush, but by the time Ousmane arrived he had settled in Tinza, making a living from growing onions, beetroot, carrots and dates, and selling them in the local markets.

In 1985 drought shook desert life to its core. The rains had failed for several seasons and the village was haunted by famine. “I was born in a time of calamity,” says Ousmane. “In the middle of dreadful events for the Touareg people. My parents knew so much hardship. Then when I was five years old the rebellion broke out. It was 1990, the year of war. I was a child, and I used to hide in amongst the rocks with the other women and children, just a few kilometres north of the village over the Algerian border. When I think of that time, it’s as if it’s all still happening in front of me.”

Thus Ousmane’s childhood was buffeted by the searing winds of recent Touareg history. The droughts of ‘68 to ’74 almost destroyed the animal herds and with them the ancient nomadic way of life of the Touareg. The drought of ’84 to ’85 almost dealt the final blow. Thousands of young men fled into exile in Algeria, Libya, Burkina Faso and beyond. That’s where the modern Touareg guitar style of music was born and then nourished by anger, homesickness, frustration and dreams of a better life. It was this generation of Touareg men, known as the ishumar, who returned to Mali and Niger in 1990 to rebel against the callousness, corruption and arrogance of the governments in the distant capitals of Bamako and Niamey. 

At first Ousmane just listened to traditional Touareg music at home, and the newer guitar music on battered old cassettes. “I well remember hearing my first Tinariwen songs. I was about five. After the death of my mother, my father was obliged to take me to live with my grown-up sister. One morning I was sitting in front of the house and this guy walked by singing a song by Inteyeden called ‘Imidiwan Kel Hoggar’ (‘My Friends the Hoggar People’). It went straight into my brain…ha ha ha.”

A few years later Ousmane began to play the guitar himself, and write songs. He was attending a school in Tinza called Les Enfants de l’Adrar, set up by a French NGO and a local man turned community leader called Hama Ag Sid Ahmed. At the end of every school year the children would create and perform musical plays about pressing themes like ignorance, drought, education and culture. 

Hama bought the school an acoustic guitar, and Ousmane adopted the instrument. With his constant friend Cheikh Ag Tiglia, he would write songs and perform them at the school shows. He learned the Tamashek guitar style by listening to a particular cassette which Tinariwen’s leader Ibrahim ‘Abaraybone’ had recorded in Algeria back in 1998. 

In 2002, events once again undermined the tenuous calm and stability in Tinza. The village was home to one of the southern desert’s most infamous freedom fighters and warlords, Ibrahim Ag Bahanga. For this reason it became a military no-go zone. Ousmane’s father left to live with his eldest sons in Libya, and both Ousmane and Cheikh went south to Kidal

Kidal is the capital of the far north east of Mali, a region known as the Adagh des Iforas (‘The Mountains of the clan Iforas’). With its wide sandy streets and dispersed one storey earthen houses, Kidal has the feel of a frontier town. For the Adagh Touareg, it’s where it all happens. 

Ousmane and Cheikh played the guitar and sang in hidden corners of Kidal, around a fire, drinking bittersweet Touareg tea with their friends. Their reputations grew very slowly, steadily, without wild leaps or fanfares. After a while they heard that a local cultural centre called the DDRK or ‘Maison du Luxembourg’, founded by the Duchess of Luxembourg who had fallen in love with the town when she visited it in 2001, was offering music classes. The teacher turned out to be Juhan Ecaré, a musician from Ivory Coast. 

Then this French theatre troupe called La Calma arrived in town and enrolled over fifty young people to perform a massive theatre piece featuring sketches about a host of local issues. It went down a storm in January 2006 at a local festival called ‘The Saharan Nights of Essouk’. Although Ousmane didn’t take part in the project, claiming disinterest in theatre (“I’m a musician…theatre’s not my thing”), Cheikh went along and played with a local percussionist called Aghaly Ag Mohammedine and a bass player called Ibrahim Ahmed, aka ‘Pinnochio’ or ‘Pino’ for short. 

On their return, Pino proposed that they form a proper band and record a demo at a small studio, which had been set up at the Maison du Luxembourg. They also decided that they needed a name, and agreed on ‘Tamikrest’, which means the knot, the junction, the coalition, in Tamashek, the language of Touareg. “Each of us came from a different place, a different zone,” explains Ousmane. “Cheikh and I from Tinza. Aghaly and Mossa Maiga from Kidal. Pino from Gao. But we found each other and we had the same ideas, the same intentions. We were like a coalition.”

On the 23rd May 2006, the army garrison in Kidal was attacked by a new Touareg rebel movement called the Alliance Démocratique pour le Changement (ADC). “It was a hard time for me,” remembers Ousmane. “I woke up early that morning and discovered that the town had turned into a nightmare. Those who wanted to join the rebels had already done so. But, in general, that wasn’t the choice of me and my friends. Because we’d never been in the army. We were musicians, not people who carry arms.”

By the end of the year a fragile peace had been restored, although Tinza’s recalcitrant son Ibrahim Ag Bahanga refused to compromise and remained on the run with his own splinter militia. Tamikrest performed at the peace Forum in March 2007, when the Touareg rebels met with the Malian government and thousands of community representatives in Kidal to map out a way forward. 

The group were developing their style and their fan base, which consisted mainly of Kidal’s younger generation. They knew the Tamashek guitar style intimately, but they were also deeply into rap, metal, Maghrebi pop and afro-disco music from Ivory Coast. They had new tastes, new desires, new ambitions and Tamikrest was their band. 

Pino was quite a mover and shaker. In late 2007 he contacted Manny Ansar, the director of the now world-famous Festival in the Desert and clinched a gig for Tamikrest. The band found the money to transport themselves the 600 miles eastward to Timbuktu. In the silky dunes of Essakane they met Dirtmusic, a group of rock’n’roll veterans from the USA and Australia. It was one of those meetings fashioned by fate in the workshops of destiny. 

Chris Eckman of Dirtmusic remembers the meeting thus: “On our first morning in Essakane we woke up hearing music, so we went across the sand to the tent opposite ours and that’s where Tamikrest was playing. Chris Brokaw grabbed his dobro and headed over, then Hugo and I eventually did the same and basically for three days we didn’t leave.”

Once again music overflew all barriers of language, culture, style, shyness and reticence. The friendship formed at Essakane grew in the following months and lead to an invitation by Dirtmusic to come to the Malian capital Bamako to make an album, and contribute to Dirtmusic’s own oeuvre. After another epic journey of 1,200 miles, by car and bus, Ousmane, Aghaly and crew entered their first professional studio and ‘Adagh’ was born.

“It felt very natural to play with Dirtmusic,” asserts Ousmane. “I’ve always appreciated all kinds of different music and it was such a pleasure to play with a different kind of band. Music isn’t something you study; it’s something you learn with your ears. I’d been listening and playing along to Bob Marley, to Marc Knopfler and Dire Straits, to Tinariwen for years. We’d been listening to so much international music and that’s why the marriage with Dirtmusic worked.”

The end of 2009 finds Tamikrest on the cusp of the world and the next chapter in their great adventure. “This opportunity to go to Europe feels like a big responsibility,” says Ousmane. “I feel like someone who’s done this exam and is now waiting for the result. We’ve already achieved quite a bit, but the hardest is still ahead.”

One thing is certain: Ousmane is clear about the band’s mission. “The situation of the Touareg is very difficult right now,” he declares. “Even before I played the guitar and started recording, I had this ambition to be a lawyer or you might say, an ‘advocate’. I wanted to be capable of expressing the hurt I felt in my heart, and speak out about the situation, even at the United Nations. Because we’re a people who don’t have journalists, we don’t have advocates. But it was only later that I realised that a musician can play that role.”

“What is the weakest part of any nation or people? It’s ignorance. We are stuck in our ignorance. I see the world changing, racing ahead, and leaving us behind. And the only thing that is holding us back is our ignorance. As artists, it’s our duty to make our problems known to the world, to sing songs about the nomadic life, about our traditions and culture. But above all, revolutionary songs, about what we see, about what the government is doing to our people, which makes no sense to me.”

There it is…Tamikrest, the knot, the coalition, the future. 


Tamikrest - Aratane N'adagh

Anana Kel Assouf, his guitar and mini portable guitar amp, playing tuareg rock with an amazing improvised band during a soirée guitare outside Niamey-Niger organized by Rissa Ag Wanaghli 6/04/2013 : Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni (Tinariwen), Afel Bocoum and his band, Atri N'Assouf, Nabil Baly Othmani and his band... and all 20 friends participating to "Le Chant des Dunes" event. Recorded by Arnaud Contreras.

Anana Kel Assouf, Tinariwen, Afel Bocoum and friends Soiree guitare Niger 3

Get the album here: http://glitterbeat.com/glitterbeat_store/

Tamikrest means “crossing” in the language of the Kel Tamashek, a traditionally nomadic Saharan people that are commonly referred to as the Tuaregs. It is an apt name for a band that so successfully merges the values of their timeless culture with the sounds and visions they have encountered on a headlong journey to the concert stages and ipods of the world. 

Since the band emerged onto the international scene four years ago with their debut album “Adagh”, they have been in constant motion, moving between the Sahara and Europe as though these places were next-door neighbors. All the while, during this same time period, their homeland has suffered increasingly profound and catastrophic events. Originally hailing from Kidal, in the northeast of Mali, as the result of ongoing war, persecution and political collapse most of the band now lives in exile in Algeria. 

These last years have been intensely vivid for Tamikrest, defined as they have been by both tragic sadness (families and friends turned refugees, the brutal imposition of Sharia law in their hometown) and collective growth (their musical dreams building one upon another). 

Their new album “Chatma”, their third, deftly navigates these experiences and fashions them into a fully persuasive and poetic musical document. The album is filled with sober reflection, moral indignation, musical experimentation, cultural celebration and the kick of rock and roll.

“Chatma” is also Tamikrest’s first album to be wholly written around a defined theme. In Tamashek “Chatma” means “Sisters” and the band has dedicated the album in their own words to: “the courage of the Tuareg women, who have ensured both their children's survival and the morals of their fathers and brothers.” 

The opening track “Tisnant an Chatma (The suffering of my sisters)” is a heartbreaking homage: « Who can estimate the suffering felt by the soul / of one who sees her sisters exhausted from waiting/ of one who sees her sisters exhausted from waiting between countries, in deep distress /and daily oppression? « 

Fittingly for an album so lyrically evocative, “Chatma “ also delivers Tamikrest's most wide-screen and wide-ranging sonic statement to date. The infectious, sing-along rock stylings of "Imanin bas zihoun", the acoustic seduction of “Adounia tabarat”, the Pink Floyd influenced montage "Assikal" and the lush, melancholy ambiance of the albums finale, “Timtar”, all add up to a sustained audio adventure. Echoes of dub, blues, psychedelia, funk and even art-rock are seamlessly weaved by Tamikrest into their increasingly individual take on the Tuareg musical tradition. 

And on an album where the title translates as "Sisters", it makes perfect sense that this time around we hear the full emergence of the haunting voice of female vocalist Wonou Walet Sidati in tandem with lead vocalist Ousmane Ag Mossa. A new guitarist, Paul Salvagnac has also joined the band, bringing with him fresh textures and possibilities.

Contemporary Tuareg music has produced several unforgettable albums in recent years and "Chatma" certainly deserves to be ranked with these. But one also gets the sense, when listening to “Chatma” that there is something uniquely innovative and exploratory about Tamikrest's musical quest and that at last they have stepped into a wide-open space of their own.
 
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Nakaned Kel Tamasheq par Aneslem El Hasse - Groupe Imzad

Min Ajli El Imzad

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