"Ansari"

Listen To Abacabok

Tartit is probably the world’s best known Tuareg roots group.  More folkloric than their rocking brethren in the group Tinariwen, these five women and four men from the Timbuktu area work mostly with traditional instruments (tinde drum, imzad fiddle, tehardent lute, voices, handclaps, and wooden flute), and some of their music, like the desert song “Tihou Beyatene,” sound right out of field recordings.  But Tartit also use electric and acoustic guitars and venture at times into the folk rock realm staked out by Tinariwen. 

With two fine albums to their credit, Tartit’s challenge was how to enhance and build on their beautiful, organic folklore without denaturing it.  Working with producers Michel Winter and Vincent Kenis (who brought his portable studio to Mali for the project), the artists manage the task here in a set of crisp, straightforward recordings.  Even when the mix is dense, as on the blowout number “Achahore I Chachare Akate,” which features Afel Bocoum and members of his band, each sound is distinct and the blend is joyfully harmonious in terms of musical style and sound texture.  Electric guitar sounds are carefully chosen, whether interspersing call and response vocals on “Assinaina,” a rootsy call for Tuareg solidarity, or taking a commanding lead as on the love song “Houmaissa.”  Guitarist Mohamed Issa ag Oumar contributes a guitar-driven original, the sinewy, seductive “Tadsaq,” a masterful balance of tradition and modernity. 

The lilting tunefulness of a folk song pervades “Ansari,” a celebration of the group’s tribe, also featuring electric guitar.  “Eha Ehenia” (about a bad girl) and “Chargouba” (about two rich men) offer slow and fast takes on Tuareg trance grooves, with the focus on women’s voices.  “Al Jahalat”—which includes the line “Hey, girls, the time has come to leave ignorance behind”—also veers toward tradition, this time featuring the wheedling, unearthly tones of the one-stringed imzad fiddle.  The title track touts the power of griots, who open the song playing their deep-toned tehardants.  In the song, an old man goes off to the desert to die, but the griot follows to lure him back.  The wanderer pleads with the griot not to sing, but he does anyway, luring the old man home.  This may be the most subtly realized and successful recording of Tuareg roots music to date. 

Contributed by: Banning Eyre for www.afropop.org