Tinariwen: Even Nomads Get The Blues

A lot has changed for TINARIWEN since they became superstars of desert rock’n’roll. But their Saharan homeland remains as troubled as ever. We track the band down in Morocco, where Michael Bonner hears tales of exile, insurgency and belonging. “As long as people are oppressed, there will be room for protest music,” they explain

IT is Solstice in Morocco. Down towards the south of the country, the pale sandstone fortifications of Essaouira face out across the Atlantic. Inside the town’s walls, very little has changed architecturally since the 18th century. Pass through the ancient gates and the old medina is a jumble of narrow, bustling streets filled with craft shops, cafés and – presumably in a nod to its colonial past – boutique French restaurants. Orson Welles, Paul Bowles and Hendrix have all been drawn to the mystical stone buildings and windswept headlands – while more recently, HBO came here to film Game Of Thrones. Currently, though, Essaouira is hosting a very different kind of entertainment: the annual Gnaoua festival, a free event that brings 500,000 people from across Africa and Europe. Now in its 22nd year, the festival has come to represent the congruence between the region’s sacred music traditions and contemporary blues, jazz, soul, reggae and tropicália from further afield. There are stalls selling charred corn on the cob, sugarcane juice and barbecued meat; street traders hawk brightly coloured clothes and jewellery alongside football strips and children’s toys. The air is filled with the bitter smell of burning charcoal. June 21, 2019, then, and Tinariwen have drawn a record crowd to Place Mulay Hassan, the town’s main square overlooking the harbour.

The collective’s mesmerising, snaking grooves, their unravelling, exploratory guitar lines and mournful meditations on freedom and exile prove both alluring and immediate. It certainly bewitches the crowd – fashionable twentysomethings down from Casablanca in skinny jeans and high heels, residents from the nearby countryside in traditional dress, the local chapter of the Sons Of The Sahara biker gang, backpackers from across Africa, a smattering of Europeans and a few cleancut Americans down from the embassy at Rabat.