KTRU Pick of the Week: Group Inerane's Guitars From Agadez

By Rose Cahalan     2/26/09 6:00pm

The electric guitar has long been an instrument of social revolution. The rise of 1950s rock stars like Elvis Presley and Little Richard helped pave the way for the Civil Rights Movement by uniting fans across race and class boundaries with the youthful appeal of a new, blended sound, as blues had previously been largely African-American, and country music the domain of rural whites.A decade later, anti-war and anti-nuclear protest music from John Lennon spoke for the hippie subculture. Today, every band seems to have penned at least one anti-Bush ballad.

But even though charity concerts like Live Aid and rocker-activists such as Bono exert political influence, the electric sound itself is no longer shocking and revolutionary to our generation, at least not the way it was when Elvis first gyrated his hips to "Hound Dog," powerfully linking the new rockabilly to the sexual revolution. Is the electric guitar really still a powerful tool for social change?

Group Inerane's Guitars From Agadez answers that question with a resounding "yes." The band and other electric musicians from the nomadic Tuareg people of the Sahara have pioneered a new musical genre specifically for the purpose of protest. Through three revolutionary wars - one of which is an ongoing violent conflict with the ruling government of Niger - the Tuareg ethnic minority has found songwriting to be one of the only forms of nonviolent dissidence available to them as they lobby for more land and rights. In 2004, the Tuareg guitar band Tinariwen gained a global following with Amassakoul ("Traveller"), touring Europe and the U.S.

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But the primary aim of Tuareg musicians has always been to rally support among rural listeners of small radio stations. They sing exclusively in Tamajaq, the Tuareg language, focusing on themes of hope and perseverance - certainly relevant ones for a group that has been resisting colonizers since the 19th century and has yet to achieve self-governance in their own territory.

Their use of the electric guitar started in the '80s, when many were living in Libyan refugee camps that had both guitars and guns. They picked up the guitars and started making a new kind of music that fused traditional elements with the propulsive force of Western garage rock.

The result, as this recording demonstrates, is a captivating synthesis that not only combines rock and indigenous music, but also allows elements of each to complement one another. For example, the call-and-response vocal structure of each song, often with a group of female vocalists responding in ululating wails to a male voice, surprisingly fits very naturally with the ebbing and flowing of the wandering guitar lines.

Taken together, the sound is trance-inducing, sometimes fully psychedelic, as in the fifth track, "Nadan Al Kazawin," which follows four up-tempo, catchy songs with a dense, feedback-filled chaos of voices and guitars. The last song, "Kamu Talyat," also stands out for its relatively calm and quiet melody in an album that is otherwise consistently driven and energetic. These slight shifts in mood serve to keep the listener engaged.

For an album of protest music, Guitars From Agadez is surprisingly joyful. Frequent handclaps, bursts of laughter and ecstatically built-up guitar riffs make each song sound as though it could have been recorded at a lively party (and perhaps they were - dedicated label Sublime Frequencies traveled to the Nigerian city of Agadez to record the musicians in their homes).

The sense of immediacy and realness created by these organic, human moments are perhaps the Tuareg's strongest moments of protest because they convey the powerful identity and unwavering pride of this marginalized nomadic group. Even apart from the remarkable cultural context, Group Inerane's African-electric sound is like nothing else - and that's revolutionary in itself.

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