Terakaft – Alone (Outhere Records)

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I love African music. I know, I know, I know – Africa isn’t a singular place but a patchwork continent of extreme diversity. And I know that each individual African country is unique: from Libya in the north to Zimbabwe in the south, from Mali in the west to Ethiopia in the east, they all have their own particular cultures, languages and environments. This diversity, however, isn’t just confined to each country’s people and places; the differences between each country’s ‘national’ music are stark and staggering.

The upbeat Afro-funk of Nigeria’s Fela Kuti is as different from the laid back desert-blues of Mali’s Ali Farka Toure as rap is from blues; the abrasive and hardcore dance sounds of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Konono Nº1 are as different from the dark lounge-jazz moods of Ethiopia’s Mulatu Astatqé as metal is from classical. Within some countries, more differences emerge: some particular examples of African national music have undergone an evolution of sorts, whereby global and Western influences have been integrated into the original templates, thanks to the sprawling interconnectedness of 20th and 21st-century life. Think of the differences between Mali’s Bassekou Kouyaté and Ali Farka Toure. Kouyaté’s sound is amplified, electric, raw and rocking with just a hint of Hendrix; in contrast, Farka Toure’s sound is more relaxed, and he favours a much more acoustic approach. And yet even a casual listener could draw a line between them, the same kind of line that exists between rock and blues.

Another such example is Terakaft’s Alone (Ténéré). And it is a monster.

Based in Northern Mali, Terakaft are of the Tuareg people (nomads of the Sahara Desert). If the name Tuareg sounds familiar, that’s probably because it has been made somewhat famous by the almighty Tinariwen (a collective of Tuareg exiles, and the most widely-known exponent of Tuareg music). In fact, Terakaft were once a part of Tinariwen, only taking on their own specific identity in 2001. But, in the same way that Bassekou Kouyaté has updated the laidback sound of Ali Farka Toure, Terakaft have updated Tinariwen’s more traditional sound, adding a sense of forceful urgency and a more pan-global influence to the sparse and hypnotic guitar grooves that define their instrumentation and attitude.

“Anabayou (Awkward)” features scratchy cyclic guitar-lines and a simple enough melody sung with gusto as a group, and combines these with the kind of 1-2-3-4 world-percussion drive favoured by someone like MIA. Think of skin drums and Latin percussion and Western drumkits all playing four-to-the -beat at the same time, these layers providing a bed for dirty guitar riffs that exist somewhere between repetitive drones and electric blues. “Karambani (Nastiness)” blends an Afro-beat guitar scratch and a 2/4 percussion beat with a deep-tuned surf-style guitar lick, a lick that for some reason conjures up audio images of Balkan Brass Bands, an image helped along by the up-and-down vocal melody that demands you hum along. In fact, this Balkan-esque feeling seems almost deliberate; “Karambani (Nastiness)” ends by getting faster and faster and faster, the frantic stop-start beat carried along by hand-claps and eventually car-crashing into a glorious mess.

I won’t go on, because I don’t want to spoil the surprise; Alone (Ténéré) is amazing. Its treasures are worth discovering for yourself, and its blend of traditional Tuareg sounds and those more global in nature is incredible, making the old seem new and the new seem even newer.

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