Dear listeners,
For today’s Amplifier, your proprietor Lindsay Zoladz graciously lent me the keys for a little tour of Africa to celebrate some of the continent’s guitar greats. It was prompted by my recent profile of Mdou Moctar, the axeman from Niger who has built up a following with a tight band and stunning solos that can sound somewhere between vintage psychedelia and the so-called desert blues — a modern update of the African rhythmic and harmonic traditions that underlie so much popular music in the West, including the blues (and rock, and jazz, and R&B …).
But honestly, any excuse is a good one to delve into this music and explore some of the characters behind it. There’s Ali Farka Touré, the Malian poet of the guitar, who learned from exposure to American bluesmen like John Lee Hooker but bristled at the idea that he was anything but an African purist. There’s Orchestra Baobab, whose songs are evidence of how musical styles pingpong around the world and can continue to evolve after returning home. And Oliver Mtukudzi, a force for justice and human rights who put music in service of his message.
When I interviewed Moctar, much of our conversation was about politics. His latest album, “Funeral for Justice,” is a take-no-prisoners assault on the legacy of colonialism in Africa, which includes the struggles of the Tuareg, a historically nomadic ethnic group in the Sahara region that are divided by national borders. Political statements are scarce in American pop music these days, but they are a vital part of many of the tracks here, in ways that can be direct or oblique.
This playlist is an assortment of some of my favorites, but is by no means meant as an exhaustive list, musically or geographically. If you’re new to this, I hope it can help you get started on a lifetime of exploration.
Thanks for listening,
Ben
Listen along while you read.
1. Mdou Moctar: “Tahoultine”
This is the track that kicked off Moctar’s journey from the heart of Niger to a stage at Coachella. It’s a low-fi amalgam of past and present, with Moctar surrounding a placid acoustic guitar part with boomy drum machines and alien-sounding, Auto-Tuned vocals. After circulating on cellphones in the Sahara region, the song made its way in 2010 to Christopher Kirkley, an American, who tracked Moctar down and made five albums with him. Moctar’s ambition was evident from the start; as Kirkley told me, one of the first things the musician asked him was, “How do I get to tour?”
2. Mdou Moctar: “Imouhar”
A standout cut on “Funeral for Justice,” Moctar’s latest album, “Imouhar” centers his screaming guitar pyrotechnics, which at times can conjure Eddie Van Halen parachuting into the Sahara. Listen for flashes of Auto-Tune once again as Moctar calls for Tuareg self-respect: “Turbans and camels,” he sings in Tamasheq, “symbols of our legacy and pride.”
3. Ali Farka Touré: “Ali Aoudy”
The sage of West African guitar, Touré, from Mali, popularized the style that has come to be known as desert blues, with somber, meditative modal lines that share harmonic DNA with American blues; when Touré first heard Western bluesmen like John Lee Hooker, the master of the single-chord boogie, he said, “This music has been taken from here.” This gently swinging track, recorded in the early 1980s, features Touré playing a meandering melody and an insistent bass note, with lyrics celebrating a hero of Malian independence.
4. Tinariwen: “Matadjem Yinmixan”
The Mali-based collective Tinariwen is part of the fabric of modern Tuareg history; its founder, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, fled the country as a child after his rebel father was killed by government forces in an uprising. For decades now, Tinariwen has set the standard for Tuareg bands with tightly coordinated rhythms led by Ag Alhabib, whose electric guitar sometimes seems to humbly pray. “Matadjem Yinmixan,” about Tuareg unity, has a groove so locked-in it could practically be a dance hit — when I saw the band at Coachella 15 years ago, every hip under that tent was in motion.
5. Bombino: “Tar Hani”
A Nigerien musician of roughly the same generation as Mdou Moctar, Bombino has also made inroads in the American rock world, recording with members of the Black Keys and Dirty Projectors. And he shreds, for sure, though Bombino is a subtler stylist than Moctar, here calling to mind lyrical players like Ry Cooder.
6. Orchestra Baobab: “Coumba”
In the 1970s and ’80s, this Senegalese band epitomized a fascinating kind of cultural transfer that had crisscrossed the Atlantic: musicians in Africa absorbing and refracting Afro-Cuban dance styles that had originally descended from enslaved Africans in the New World. Led by the guitarist Barthélémy Attisso, who made complex arpeggiated runs sound as simple and joyful as a mambo step, Orchestra Baobab had a seemingly bottomless repertoire of sweetly melodic, irresistibly breezy tracks like “Coumba.” Seeing them play in Central Park on a perfect summer day in 2002 is a cherished memory for me.
7. Sir Victor Uwaifo: “Igboroho (Ekassa 5)”
A Nigerian polymath, Uwaifo was never a star on the level of Fela Kuti or Oliver Mtukudzi, although he did tour the West, reaching the Village Vanguard in New York in 1970. In the 2000s his work was rediscovered and anthologized, and it’s eccentric and vibrant, with touches of vintage African highlife style, raw R&B and some wild-man guitar solos. This track is one of a series based on a traditional coronation dance called an ekassa, though in notes to a reissue Uwaifo describes it as a song by construction workers, “meant to serve as a warning that if the client doesn’t pay them, then the house will fall down.”
8. Djelimady Tounkara: “Fanta Bourama”
One of Africa’s most admired guitarists, the virtuosic Tounkara was the longtime lead player in the Rail Band (a.k.a. Super Rail Band), a popular Malian group that, like Orchestra Baobab, was born out of Africa’s midcentury craze for Latin music. On this sparkling acoustic track, Tounkara plays a romantic, flamenco-style lead, showing off his chops for a solid minute and a half before the vocals come in; he could have gone on forever.
9. Fela Kuti and Africa 70: “Zombie”
A titan of 20th-century African culture, Kuti was a musical and political revolutionary who used the unruly power of his huge funk band in challenging Nigeria’s military government in the 1970s. Brawny horns take the melodic center stage in most of Fela’s music, though he makes highly effective use of guitars as a kind of percussion element, as James Brown did. Led by Oghene Kologbo, Fela’s guitarists on “Zombie” — a mocking censure of soldiers blindly following orders — play a sequence of continuously interlocking riffs, like wheels that never stop turning.
10. Oliver Mtukudzi: “Andinzwi”
An influential Zimbabwean singer, songwriter and activist, Mtukudzi was never a flashy soloist, but he used his guitar to stirring effect in hymnlike calls for justice and peace. “Do you have to die to be a hero?” he asks in “Andinzwi,” playing a simple, soothing repeated figure on his acoustic guitar. To Western ears, it can resemble classic folk, but it’s also meant as an imitation of the bright sound of the mbira, a traditional thumb piano.
The Amplifier Playlist
“The Power and Beauty of African Guitar Greats” track list
Track 1: Mdou Moctar, “Tahoultine”
Track 2: Mdou Moctar, “Imouhar”
Track 3: Ali Farka Touré, “Ali Aoudy”
Track 4: Tinariwen, “Matadjem Yinmixan”
Track 5: Bombino, “Tar Hani”
Track 6: Orchestra Baobab, “Coumba”
Track 7: Sir Victor Uwaifo, “Igboroho (Ekassa 5)”
Track 8: Djelimady Tounkara: “Fanta Bourama”
Track 9: Fela Kuti and Africa 70: “Zombie”
Track 10: Oliver Mtukudzi, “Andinzwi”
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