In past years, I’ve mostly ignored Northside unless there was a specific touring band I wanted to see (last year these included Mount Eerie and Beirut, for example) mainly because the festival takes place over a weekend and I’m usually working during those. But this year my little sister and my niece were in town so I took the whole week off and began entertaining mad fantasies of putting the tourists to bed by nine pm and galavanting about North Brooklyn all night. Unfortunately this turned to be a bit unrealistic, considering that I was exhausted from playing tour guide all day and that many of the showcases took place a little too early.
Thursday was a total no go, and on Friday I completely missed Jens Lekman, of Montreal, and Beach Fossils playing the McCarren Park show which had originally cited as justification for the purchase of the badge. I suppose this means I am oddly doomed to only see Beach Fossils side projects live and never ever actually see Beach Fossils. While pondering how that could be, I realized that missing that show meant being able to see Tuareg-Berber jam band Tinariwen and headed to The Warsaw. The venue is a Polish dancehall that hosts more Polka than Punk Rock, but their sound was perfect and the ballroom is absolutely gorgeous.
Tinariwen had just started playing and the sight of them was stirring: five men in brightly colored traditional Berber dress beamed pure joy at the audience, seated behind traditional drums or deftly strumming electric guitars. The band was founded by Ibrahim Ag Alhabib and has included upwards of twenty members, with a rotating line-up due in large part to political turmoil in the band’s homeland
Though Tinariwen’s roots in disparate refugee camps is by now legendary, the five touring members onstage at The Warsaw played in perfect sync with one another, their voices and rhythms seeming timeless. When one man sang, another would lead the audience in polyrhythmic clapping before the two would switch roles, weaving together a variety of traditional and African pop sounds with spidering Western guitar parts reminiscent of blues rock.
Percussion also plays a huge role in Tinariwen’s sound; they utilize drumming techniques and instruments from all over West Africa which anchor clarion guitar solos. One particularly compelling drum had a cylindrical base like that of the djembe but the head looked to be more like a calebasse gourd. The top could be pounded for a deeper bass sound or the percussionist could make more rapid, sharper tones using some rings worn on his thumbs.
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I’ve never seen a band happier to inspire an audience the way Tinariwen did; when they shouted messages between songs in French, or in Tamashek (their native language) they were often met with enthusiastic replies. It’s not hard to understand why; in the many live performances I’ve had the pleasure to witness, few bands have met the talent I saw this particular evening. I was so moved that I signed up to see them again on Monday during a taping of an encore performance for MTV’s Iggy. Paul Simon was in attendance, and Kyp Malone of TV On The Radio performed a lovely version of “Tenere Taqqim Tossam”, then insisted on doing it again, but better.
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