Echoes of the Desert in West LA: Tinariwen @ the El Rey Theatre Sept. 30, 2011

On Friday night I drove out to the El Rey Theatre in Miracle Mile to catch Tinariwen. For those of you who may have missed them to this point, they're a band from northern Mali hailing from the Tuareg tribe of the northern Sahara. They've become quite a sensation over the past few years, due mostly to their surprisingly polished-and-yet-somehow-still-just-exotic-enough brand of languid, flowing Sub-Saharan desert blues (and not a little due to their strong worldwide distribution and constant international touring). I'll spare you the details here of their backstory, which includes a lot of intersections into uprisings, revolts, and Western pop-cultural influence in modern West African history (here's the easily digestable version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinariwen) .

Importantly, Tinariwen is really at the forefront of a whole new wave of West African musicians making inroads with a fresh generation of American and European press and musicians near-desperate for something with any real substance. The African influence on the younger set is becoming more and more palpable, evidenced by the popularity of (great) bands such as Dirty Projectors and tUnE-YarDs, and (not-so-great) groups like Vampire Weekend, as well as by Tinariwen's and other fellow Africans' appearances this year at cutting-edge music festivals such as All Tomorrow's Parties and Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin (as well as recent years seeing bands like Animal Collective traveling to the historic Festival in the Desert music fest in Essakane, Mali--cross-cultural exchange at its finest). Witness to this point is Tinariwen's newest record Tassili, a collection of collaborations with musicians ranging from Nels Cline to TV on the Radio. Of course, "world-music" generically remains popular with the all-grown-up, well-meaning neo-colonialists responsible for buying Global Grooves discs at their local 10,000 Villages; the fact that the world music "genre" (don't I sound like an ass) is prone to its regrettable moments should be none of our concern. As for Tuareg desert-blues in particular, there's a host of bands hailing from the same region, doing what I've heard people lately narrowly refer to as "Tinariwen-music": Terakaft, Entran Finatawa, Tartit, Tamikrest, etc etc. The music as it now stands has wide and far-reaching roots; from traditional Tuareg forms to other regional tribal musics to a general Malian 'blues' style that's well trod ground for other area musicians such as Ali Farka Toure and his recently much-heralded guitar-slinging son Vieux. Tinariwen has consisted of many members over the 30+ years since its inception in a Libyan refugee camp; anyhow, all this info is on their website and no need to regurgitate it here. Suffice to say that the cultural back-and-forth is showing no signs of stopping. To this reviewer, the situation recently is becoming reminiscent of a generation of hippies back in the 60's and 70's (and still today) looking to far-off, exotic India for mystic inspiration and "liberation" from whatever social hang-ups they felt were impeding their creative flow; these days, India ain't so mystic anymore, and the (criminally) under-appreciated mega-diversity of African music in general and West African styles in particular is getting mined by a fresh-faced gaggle of players looking for something, anything, with some tangible culture and groove present in it. Not that this trend is unprecedented (one will remember Paul Simon's Graceland, Brian Jones' PR work for the Master Musicians of Jajouka, etc), but it's worth noting that there's a lot of it going on lately.*

*(Let us not forget the whole "desert blues is the original wellspring for American blues" nonsense that went out with the overplayed "Ali-Farka Toure is the African John Lee Hooker and vice versa" stuff: of course Africa is the root source of the blues, is that even an issue? It's also the root source of humanity in general, so there's where the comparisons start to go a little fuzzy, if you dig my drifting. Now that that's out of the way.)

I headed down to the El Rey early to ensure parking within a five-mile radius of the theatre (it's LA, don't ya know), and got there plenty early enough alright. Early enough to get a $9 beer (fuck me, I know, but I had already waited in line for 5 minutes whence I found out that we were collectively waiting our turn to get punked by the keepers of the kegs). Looking around, it was worth noting that the crowd was about 70/30 West LA 40+ upscale fashionista garbage to the vastly outnumbered people of my age group, and I saw nobody there under 25 or so, I think. With all the hip-hype around Tinariwen in general (they're only a month away from playing the same festival as Slayer, among others), I was surprised to see so many Santa Monica soccer moms and blue-tooth sporting dads in the audience. But it's West LA, and not a filthy scuzz-punk club, so go figure. I'm out of my element here.

After about an hour, we were "treated" to the first band, Hindi Zahra, a French-Moroccan singer fronting a diverse and well-groomed backing band. According to her website, the band has won some sort of award(s?) in the category of "Best World Music"; one would not have been able to discern that from the dismal live performance on Friday night. As the band stated, it was their first US show ever, and so they were a bit on edge, but that doesn't make up for the fact that the band mis-stepped on every single song (not an overstatement). Blown cues, forgotten notes, wrong time signatures, spaced-on lyrics, visible band tensions, you name it, I've never seen a band put on this lousy of a performance, and this coming from someone who actually enjoys most things unpolished and raw. I can't remember seeing anything quite this bad since I saw Fiery Furnaces go into an onstage melt-down in Austin a few years ago; but at least their songs were interesting, and while that was more voyeuristic and entertaining, here I just felt embarrassed for the band. The music was pretty insipidly bland to my ear: just vague, blase world-pop fronted by a marginally beautiful songstress, a little cabaret flavor thrown in for good measure, boring, repetitive, and simplistic progressions marked by aforementioned snafus, and two songs that were seemingly Tuareg/Berber in nature but that in this context sounded forced, like they were inserted simply to remind the audience that the band has embedded street-cred just because some of them hail from Africa. I could go on. Lame all the way around in the live context, maybe their records are better. But if you can't pull it off live, then what's the point?

But all was not lost, and Tinariwen came out shortly after to cleanse our collective palettes. Onstage at the El Rey the band was a sight to behold: dressed to the hilt in colorful bedouin desert robes with full facemasks and turbans, bathed in soft blue light, and sporting some strange percussion instruments, it's a wonder that the Department of Homeland Security even lets these guys perform at all. Not that they needed all the accoutrement to affect such a powerful stage presence; I'm positive that they could have wowed all of us in khakis and Hawaiian shirts, it was that good. The sound was phenomenal all night, and the band moved in and out of slower call and response numbers into more upbeat and downright groovy material that had the crowd pulsating right along with the band. The communication between band members was one of the showcase elements of the whole night: different instruments took turns leading the collective, speaking in phrases and flowing passages that wordlessly gave direction to the individual songs. Lead singer/guitarist Ibrahim Ag Alhabib's plaintive, low-throated vocals and sparse guitar playing formed the foundation for the amazing back-up playing, especially that of Eyadou Ag Leche and Said Ag Ayad's stellar bass and percussion work.

Though a highlight of the recent Tassili album and a further indication of the rising level of collaboration between US and West African musicians, the guest appearances at the El Rey were the low points of the show for me. After the butchered opening slot, Hindi Zahra was invited back on stage for a slow, call and response dirge, during which she seemed both out of place and a bit bewildered. To make matters worse, the mic that had been working fine for an hour immediately gave out (twice) when she began singing into it, leading to yet another uncomfortable moment onstage, and once it was fixed the song was all but over. Shortly after, Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio came out and jammed a couple, and as much as I like those guys on their own, it didn't mesh for me here either, though I look forward to hearing the cuts they did on the most recent album. It might have been nerves again, but it didn't gel well, and no doubt--I would be nervous as hell to play onstage with those guys as well. Finally, the last song of the night featured the completely random addition of Flea and Josh Klinghoffer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, which actually went off rather well, but mostly because they just stayed in the cut and played a Tinariwen track with a little added bass frenetics courtesy of Flea. All in all, a great show, and worthy of checking out should they be in your area soon. But you may wanna skip the opener.