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...
Tag Archives: Niger
We’ve partnered with Groovalizacion Radio to bring you a monthly collection of the best world music-related videos. That’s our way to give value to too often overlooked, rich and diverse artistic expressions. Listen with your eyes! Watch the full playlist:
![Album Review: Bombino – Azel [Partisan Records, 1st April 2016]](https://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...
Cross-cultural collaborations are a big thing at WOMAD, and 2015 was no exception. Today we talked to a most unusual pairing of desert blues fused with the folk traditions of the chilly Baltic. Etran Finatawa guitarist, percussionist and vocalist Alhousseini Anivolla from Niger teamed up with fiddler and singer Maarja...
