Today, Tuareg musical pioneers Tinariwen announced that their tenth studio album, Hoggar, is due out on March 13, through the band’s own label Wedge. On the album and more than 45 years into their storied career, the band return to the foundations of their sound. Fierce advocates for their people’s nomadic culture that exists in the desert borderlands between Mali and Algeria, Tinariwen’s bluesy, guitar-driven music has found global acclaim over the past two decades for its lively blend of Tamasheq-language politicism, syncopated rhythms and soaring melody.
On Hoggar, Tinariwen now stake their claim as elders of this Tuareg musical tradition by going back to their early years of songwriting with acoustic guitars and communal singing around the desert campfire, while also passing the torch onto a younger generation of featured musicians who can continue to keep the flame of rebellion and defiance alive.
Alongside the album announcement, Tinariwen has also shared Hoggar’s first single, “Sagherat Assan,” which is a traditional Sudanese song featuring soulful, melismatic vocals from Sudanese artist Sulafa Elyas. “Sagherat Assan’ is a traditional song carried from Sudan to the Sahara, Japonais (one of the band founders who died in 2021) and I were in Al Kufrah (a city at the border between Sudan and Libya) in 1989, when I was beginning to learn the guitar. We met a musician who was playing this song and loved it so much that Japonais learned it and began performing it again and again, allowing it to travel and endure. This version features Sulafa Elyas, an extraordinary Sudanese singer and oud player now living in exile in France,” said Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni.
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
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