While it's often been said that music is a great tool for communication, I don't think that anyone has taken that adage as literally in recent years as the nomadic peoples of the Sahara desert known as the Tuareg. For the past thousand years or so they have traveled the desert herding their flocks from one patch of arable land to another. Using their extensive knowledge of the desert and the trails that lead through its shifting sands, they also served as traders carrying spices and other goods between villages and outposts that dotted the Sahara. It's most likely from the Tuareg that we in West developed our romantic image of long lines of camels wending their way through seas of sand.
The Tuareg's way of life was first disrupted with the coming of the Europeans, in their case the French, who sought to bring them to heel. However, no matter what damage the French may have inflicted during their time as colonial masters, the manner of their departure made things even worse. French North Africa, including the parts of the Sahara desert which had been the Tuareg's traditional territory, was divided up arbitrarily into various countries. In order to continue on with their traditional way of life and follow the routes they had traveled for centuries they now had to deal with five countries; Algeria, Libya, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.
By the 1980s their traditional way of life was seriously threatened by the loss of pasture land due to drought and the encroachment of urban centres. More and more people were forced into refugee camps and cities where they were treated as second class citizens. In an attempt to reclaim some of their lost territory the Tuareg accepted an offer from Libya to train them as guerrilla fighters. Yet it wasn't just weapons training they received in Libya, for along with sub-machine guns and other automatic weaponry many of the young men equipped themselves with electric guitars.
They wrote songs praising their traditional way of life and the beauty of the desert, but most of all they sang to encourage their people to fight to preserve both of them, even if it meant taking up arms to do so. The focal points of the rebellion were in Niger and Mali and cassettes of the music was smuggled into those areas. At one point the situation was so volatile that being caught by police or army in either of those countries with a tape from one of the Libyan based bands would result in arrest. Those first groups were said to have rode into battle with machine guns in their arms and electric guitars strapped to their backs, and it's from them that a second generation of Tuareg musicians have taken their inspiration.
Article comments