The Music of Mali — Part 1

Where’s Mali?

In Western Africa.

It was once part of French Sudan, the collection of France’s West African colonies, and home to a city that, at least since the 16th century, has been synonymous with a mystical place — the city of Timbuktu. Despite many thinking this is some strange faraway land¹, Timbuktu and Mali are both very much real².

Modern Mali

An introduction from someone who doesn’t know much about Modern Mali

Mali is home to over 18 million people, and was once a major regional hub. But like most colonies, esp. African ones, the legacy of Europe’s scramble to dispossess has left Mali poor, and stricken with political and military strife. The most recent of the country’s many conflicts is the ongoing armed insurrection by jihadists in Northern Mali³. Before (and during) that, it suffered coups, and general unrest and instability. The coup d’état, it turns out, is a lasting legacy of France’s bloody colonisation, not only as a phrase in Mali’s national language, but also as a recurring phenomenon.

This Azawad conflict, as the battle for northern Mali is called, is closely related to yet another feature of French — and most European — colonisation, esp. in Africa. Mali is occupied by several peoples who historically had identities completely separate from one another, sometimes in direct opposition to one another. The north is home to the nomadic Tuaregs and the Moors, who are Saharan nomads of Berber and Arab descent. The south, where most of the population lives, is home to many Sub-Saharan peoples, chief among whom are the Bambara, other Mandé peoples, Fula peoples, and Songhai peoples. The slipshod drawing of borders during decolonisation seems designed to plunge most colonies into a period of post-independence uncertainty with which most ex-colonies are still coming to terms⁴.

But that’s not what this piece is about.

The Music of Mali

The above two factors play a key role in the music of Mali, which is reflective of the above two narratives⁵.

• Resilience, aspiration, even joy, in the face of conflict,
• The combination of local traditions juxtaposed with influences from imperial western hegemons.

Tinariwen: Poet Soldiers of the North

At the risk of glorifying conflict, I’ll say that Tinariwen are actual rebels, not of the rock-n-roll sort. They’re Tuaregs, whose families were, in the 60’s, involved in a rebellion against Mali and its neighbours. As a result of the bloody uprising, many were packed into rebel camps in Algeria, Libya, and Morocco. It was here that they got together and started playing music together. Somewhere along the line, they got trained by the Libyan military, and returned to Mali to once again rebel against the Malian government. After a peace agreement was signed between the belligerents, the members who make up Tinariwen dropped their weapons, and picked up where they left off as musicians.

From a musical perspective, Tinariwen are a collective of nomads. In a sense, they are a tribe⁷. The band isn’t static, in that its composition is constantly changing. Their identity remains with Tinariwen, irrespective of which iteration of Tinariwen is being discussed. Their influences come from all over the place — Algerian rai (remember Sting’s Desert Rose?), Arabic and Berber music, the blues, West African guitar music, etc. To folks like me, who haven’t had a steady diet of African music, it sounds unearthly and mystical, much like the region seemed to 16th century Europeans and 21st century English teachers.

A combination of their fascinating backstory and accessible-yet-otherworldly sound has made them darlings of the west. They’ve played with RHCP, at WOMAD, in the KEXP studio. This despite singing, and often introducing albums and songs in Tamasheq, not in French. Of course, it helps that their choice of instrument is the guitar, not the kora.

But their mainstream success shouldn’t take away from how great their music is, and honestly, how unlikely their success is. It’s hard to see ‘make music, not war’ in action, but here’s a group that’s done just that, and overcome second choice fallacy cynicism with the sheer quality of their music.

That said, to those who know a little bit about Mali, Tinariwen sounds a lot like what they’d expect most Malian music to sound like. Part 2 will further the notion that there is a ‘sound of Mali’, attack it, and hopefully destroy it.

¹ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6062360.stm

² Timbuktu itself is a World Heritage Site.

³ That’s where Timbuktu is. A poet would lament the 21st century’s ability to demystify, downright destroy even the most enduring of legends.

⁴ I’m an Indian, and have argued about Kashmir twice over the past ten days. Poorly drawn borders, at least as I can see it, are likely to remain a large part of the legacy of the European Imperial Age for a while.

⁵ Maybe being a gulab juman Indian⁶ has made me particularly sensitive to these narratives — I , for one, readily grabbed on to the plank of a country of many languages and peoples adopting the language of the colonial master; I’m a case in point.

⁶ Brown on the outside, white on the inside.

⁷ I know this sounds like glorifying again. But in this case, I believe this eye-rolly cliché is true.