When they burst onto the so-called ‘world’ music scene with their debut LP ‘Adagh’ back in 2010, Tamikrest were the next generation of nomadic Saharan protest singers, the self-styled ‘children of Tinariwen’ who have just as much to say about the plight of the Tuareg people as their critically acclaimed predecessors.
Well, if Tinariwen are the stately high priests of dusty desert blues, revered by members of TV On The Radio and Wilco, then on tonight’s evidence Tamikrest are still relishing the role of fired-up novitiates, despite currently touring their third release. They’re taking the opportunity to test the torque of their desert fathers’ earthy grooves with the kind of Western influences only a radio (or indeed a TV) can supply.
But thankfully, such is the supernatural transcendence of the African six-piece that despite their traditional Tuareg dress, they defy even the most temporary boundaries of geography. Thus on a damp October night on England’s South Coast they proceed to roundly hypnotise their entire audience until the room collapses into collective cosmic surrender. Pounding percussion, wah-wah guitars and call-and-response incantations providing the pendulum – a process that completes itself before even the first song is through.
Humbly gracing the stage of a not-quite-full Komedia, they seem less like fish out of water and more like the very embodiment of the principle of complementary opposites: primeval yet youthful, timeless and yet undeniably present in both sound and appearance.
Add to this the sense that the band are uninterested in the theatrics and personality cults that most acts rely on to get crowds to look up from their phones. It starts to dawn on us that this won’t be a night characterised by anything as fickle as opinion or taste, but purely by the human experience we call ‘feeling’ – in this case the feeling that the meek might finally, gloriously, inherit the earth.
And what a feeling it is. Despite shifting between whispered laments and the controlled fury of a full-on drum and bass workout, the band never – not for the blink of an eye – lose touch with the eye of their very own storm, nor even break sweat.
If the scientists at CERN and the like want to save themselves a lot of time and money, then 90 minutes in the company of these guys would supply a lot of answers – theirs is the kind of effortless, mutating groove whose sheer depth of force keeps the planets themselves aligned.
In an age where so much of what we hear is either an egocentric hymn to the booty-shaking body or lost in the vacuous recesses of formulaic, intellectual posturing, it is grace indeed to bear witness to something as sacred as music springing untainted from its very source – a place which, incidentally, you will never find on any map.
Komedia, Tuesday 22nd October 2013
Words by Donald Wolfe
