Kel Assouf are a rocking inter-global trio, whose roots fuse from West African Sahara to European Belgium and beyond. They sit comfortably in the Tuareg musical character, moulded by trailblazers Tinariwen, but with this new release, they burst through and breakdown musical barriers, roaring rock’n’roll, as well as spiritually meditative...
Tag Archives: Tuareg Rock
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...
The second most important city in Northern Italy, Turin is a place of hidden gems. One of them is a once-abandoned 18th-century railway repair building turned into a cultural hub: OGR (Officine Grandi Riparazioni). In less than a year, the majestic industrial building has become a central location of the...
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Download this exclusive FREE Rhythm Passport album TODAY! Preview of the album: Track List: 1. Blundetto feat. Ken Boothe – Have a Little Faith [from Slow Dance; Heavenly Sweetness] 00:00 – 03:01 2. Winston McAnuff & Fixi – Big Brother [Chapter Two Records] 03:02 – 06:30 3. Bombino – Tehigren...
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...
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....
Tamikrest always play pretty cool, eclectic music, with intricate layers of artistry. They blend rock and native music, native that is to West Africa. Their most recent album Kidal (released in March by Glitterbeat) is as cool as their music has ever been: a unique blend of poetry and instrumentals rocking out...
For Glitterbeat Records, Tamikrest’s Kidal represents the perfect balance between the rock and meditative elements. The importance given to the message in the Tamashek language expresses the concerns of a marginalised people. The Tuareg people have a long history of hardship, oppression and insane control of political, economic and religious...