The blues music of the Sahara Desert in Northern Africa has slowly emerged as a popular music genre globally; bands like Terakaft hold the flagpole for the guitar-led cyclical trance style. Having branched off the original Tinariwen collective, Terakaft have released seven albums of Tuareg rebel rock. The Tuaregs live...
Tag Archives: Tuareg Blues
Since 2016, when we first met them at WOMAD UK, we have constantly felt under the rocky spell of Kel Assouf. The roughness of their sound, which goes side-by-side with their heartfelt and profound lyrics, has brought new life into the so-called Tuareg rock style. Despite being based in Brussels...
Event Review: Africa Now @ OGR (Turin, Italy; Saturday 22nd September to Thursday 18th October 2018)
In recent years, Turin has gained quite a reputation in the music world for its electronic/dance-oriented scene, being the host city of Italy’s largest electronic music festival, Club to Club. Nevertheless, the city has much more to offer, with new upcoming events and festivals popping up year after year. One of them is...
![Album Review: Imarhan – Temet [City Slang; February 2018]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/imarhan-temet-335x335.jpg)
Imarhan are a five-piece Tuareg band from Tamanrasset, the Southern Algerian part of the Sahara desert that covers much of North Africa. Their second album Temet is released by the same label as their successful debut – City Slang. Temet was self-produced in Paris, with the help of genre pioneers...
![Album Review: TootArd – Laissez Passer [Glitterbeat Records]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/a2489211345_16-1-335x335.jpg)
I first heard of TootArd (Arabic for ‘strawberries’) in my Casablanca apartment in the wake of the Arab Spring, with their first hit Ruh Bladi. Released in 2011, the group’s reggae-influenced first album Nuri Andaburi took the band to perform over the Golan Heights, and in Jerusalem, Palestine, and beyond....
