[audio http://www.filefreak.com/pfiles/50153/Inerane-Kuni.mp3]

Group Inerane – ‘Kuni Majagani’

I think this song and the above picture are a good match for each other. It makes me picture someone dancing underwater to the gritty sounds of Niger in a sticky heat far, far away.

Group Inerane is the now sound of the Tuareg Guitar Revolution sweeping across the Sahara Desert and inspired by the rebel musicians that started this music as a political weapon used to communicate from the Libyan Refugee camps in the 1980s and 1990s.

Spearheaded by the enigmatic guitar hero Bibi Ahmed, Group Inerane has been together for several years and carries the rich tradition of Tamachek guitar songs for another generation. Performed with two electric guitars, a drum kit and a chorus of vocalists, their music is a combination of amplified roots rock, blues, and folk in the local Tuareg styles, at times entering into full-on electric guitar psychedelia. The above recording was captured live in the city of Agadez in the Republic of Niger.

Official site

Note: Group Inerane’s album Guitars From Agadez (Music of Niger) seems to be no longer available either on the above site or at Amazon.

Photo by Phillipe