![Kel Assouf]()
African music and classic rock may seem like two genres that don’t have a lot in common. But dig a little deeper, and you will find that the two are much more connected than you might think. Rock’n’roll itself, as originated by pioneers like Chuck Berry, owes a lot to the African-American music forms blues and rhythm & blues. Keep going back in history, and you wind up all the way back, with recently enslaved African villagers trying to maintain their roots and culture against almost impossible odds, mixing their African heritage with the folk music of their oppressors and laying the foundation for much of today’s popular music. So maybe it’s not a stretch to say that with artists like Kel Assouf, the music itself has come full circle, reconnecting the sounds of pop and…
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…rock with their ancient African roots.
Immigration is a hot button issue today, but it’s easy to forget that immigration is as old as humanity itself and that all the world’s great cultures have been hybrid cultures. Kel Assouf is an immigrant, a Nigerien musician living in Belgium with his family. His main instrument is the guitar, a Flying V to be precise, and that iconic rock’n’roll instrument serves as a fitting symbol for Assouf’s eclectic musical identity.
Assouf was born and raised in Niger as part of the nomadic Tuareg –or Kel Tamashek as they prefer to be called- so his roots lie deep within that culture. At the same time, he has been greatly influenced by “stoner” rock and the classic rock of bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. A perhaps less obvious influence is dance music and electronica, but as becomes clear from “Fransa”, the opener to Assouf’s new album Black Tenere, the hypnotic beat and meandering melodies of traditional Arabic music actually have a lot in common with dance culture.
Black Tenere was produced by the band’s keyboard player Ben Youssef, who is himself a rising star as a producer in Maghreb music, at Stureparken Studio, a musician-owned recording studio in Stockholm.
Lyrically, Black Tenere deals with the fate of the Tamashek, an essentially stateless nomadic people who have been fighting for their rights since the days of colonialism. Today their traditional way of life is threatened by greed for the desert’s natural resources, a struggle only too familiar to many indigenous people the world over. The album’s lyrics pull no punches, confronting colonialism in opener “Fransa” and condemning the US in “America” while calling for resistance in “Tamatant”.
The focus of the album is Assouf’s guitar, a guttural, raw force of nature stylistically reminiscent of pioneer Bombino, who with the help of the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach paved the way for future Tamashek bands. Assouf’s guitar is bluesy, muscular and sinewy, with more than a nod to stoner rock and 60s psychedelia. Most songs follow the tried and true formula of heavy guitar and hypnotic beats, but there are a few notable exceptions.
In “Tamatant”, Assouf’s guitar is free from distortion, allowing its pure lyricism to shine through over a bed of beautiful ambient sounds. Echoes of Brian Eno and Robert Fripp’s collaborations make this track an especially successful mix of electronica and Tamashek music.
In another example, “Ariyal” starts with swirling Hammond organ and piercing guitar lines, taking more than a minute to build up to a pounding tribal beat and nasal guitar riffs. “Taddout” is a personal favourite, a majestic tour de force, evolving from an Eno-esque soundscape into modal guitar and Hammond organ textures before drums and bass kick in. Assouf’s guitar is echoed by an eerie synth voice, creating a hallucinatory, mesmerizing sonic journey.
Black Tenere stands as an excellent album and a potential milestone in the blossoming genre which, for a lack of a better term, critics have been calling “desert rock”. But I find myself wishing the sonic adventurousness had gone further. The meeting ground between Tamashek (and Arabic music in general), 60s and 70s psychedelic/stoner rock, and electronica seems to be wide open and fertile ground for experimentation. Personally, I feel that songs like “Taddout” and “Tamatant” are only scratching the surface of what Assouf can offer. A continent away, in New York City, an Italian expatriate who calls himself “the Spy from Cairo” is crafting instrumental pieces that blend electronica, dub, reggae and traditional Arab music. Clearly the time is right for an explosion of creativity and innovation in this hybrid genre where East meets West and many cultural strands mingle and coexist (can we come up with a less condescending term than “desert rock’? ) For now, “Black Tenere” has opened the door and shown the path, and that alone is a major accomplishment. — folkradio.co.uk
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