Back in 2013, the story of Songhoy Blues made the headlines. After being forced to move to Bamako by a jihadist group that banned music in northern Mali, Garba Touré founded the band “to recreate that lost ambience of the north and make all the refugees relive those northern songs”....
Tag Archives: Desert Rock
If your music is strong enough to overcome religious fundamentalism and exile, how can a narrow-minded visa denial possibly harm it? That’s why Songhoy Blues, without their original bass player (who was stuck in Bamako because of an issue with his documents) performed a show to remember at Omeara. Introduced expertly,...
A 40-year career, seven albums and a Grammy Award can dismiss any need for introductions; they speak for themselves. However, the importance for contemporary music of a band like Tinariwen can’t be stressed enough. The Malian band still fights, and fights hard with its sound, because Tuareg tradition is still...
![Album Review: Bombino – Azel [Partisan Records, 1st April 2016]](http://www.rhythmpassport.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/a3170313722_10-335x335.jpg)
Azel is the name of a small town on the outskirts of the city of Agadez, in Niger, where the only Tuareg school in the country is located. Azel, however, is also a word of common usage in the Tamasheq language: it means namely ‘roots’ or ‘stems’ of a tree,...
We’re backstage at WOMAD 2016 drinking mint tea with Kel Assouf, a group of musicians who describe themselves as playing ‘Stoner Rock’ from the desert. But this is not the Californian desert of Palm Desert Rock acts like Queens of the Stone Age- we’re talking about the Sahara desert. The...
London Tribes is bringing to London Tuareg guitarist Bombino, presenting to the public his new album Azel. A member of the Tuareg Ifoghas clan, Bombino (stage name of Omara Moctar) came to prominence in 2011, thanks to his album Agadez, that was acclaimed worldwide for it represented desert-rock at its...
Since their formation in 2012, Malian band, Songhoy Blues have found themselves very much on the rise. Following a highly successful 2015 marked by their debut album Music in Exile, they will be returning to London on 21st May at the Roundhouse. As a celebration of music ‘from Mali and...