Kidal is the fourth album from Tuareg group Tamikrest, on which the band find a balance between their more rocking out-there sounds and the reflective side of their output. Above is a video for ‘Wainan Adobat’ taken from the album.
The video captures the group playing live, amongst various shots from the recording studio and desert in which they live. The recordings for Kidal took place in Bamako, Mali, with Mark Mulholland from Tony Allen’s Afro-Haitian Experimental Orchestra taking up producing duties. Rhissa Ag Mohamed of the group has written a note on the motivations behind the album which you can read in full below. It’s out on March 17 via Glitterbeat Records.
"Situated in the heart of the Adagh, Kidal has been inhabited for ages by the blue men of the desert ‘Kel Tamashak’. Between 1916 and 1917, the French invaded the city and the rest of the Sahara region in the beginning of the 20th century. From that time on, the Touareg people never stopped resisting for their land, moreover after the colonists left us to another oppressor despite our aspirations.
"Our people has suffered countless tragedies under this other yoke, from the first revolt in 1963 until the present popular uprising in April 2012, going through dark periods in 1990 and in May 2006. Kidal is the cradle of popular revolts and it keeps withstanding the wrongdoing perpetrated by obscure hands against its people over the years.
"Together with the neighboring localities who suffer the same atrocities and who share the same cause, Kidal remains the most affected by all these series of sad episodes, aghast in times of war as well as in times of peace.
"This album evokes all the suffering and manipulations our tormented people are victims of; caught in pincers from all sides."
