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Album: Terakaft, Kel Tamasheq (World Village)

 

Andy Gill
Friday 24 August 2012 14:10 BST
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Featuring the usual cyclical guitar swirls, call and response vocal chants and urgent handclap rhythms, Kel Tamasheq ("The People Who Speak Tamashek" – ie, the Touareg) is as infectiously engaging as you'd expect from an offshoot of the Tinariwen taproot.

But while the music retains familiar desert-blues stylings, the lyrics reflect the traumatic disruption in the rapidly-changing world of the Touareg, with criticism of the Ansar Dine fundamentalist invaders in "Imad Halan", and several reflections on the turmoil of war, most poetically in "Taddaza".

Download: Tirera; Awa Adounia; Aïma Ymaïma; Taddaza

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