Tales of Tinariwen: There is something vaguely silly about the hilarious puss of your favorite rapper when compared to the grizzled visages of south Saharan group, Tinariwen. Nas, 50 Cent, and other tuff dog dudes are meant to impress with their wicked biographies, serious cash and malevolent stares. But one look at the cover of Tinariwen's Water Is Life gives you an idea of what r­eal, non corporate, still kicking it from a barren wasteland, badass composure is all about.

Hassan (aka Abin Abin), Mohammed (aka Japonais), Abdallah (aka Catastrophe), Ibrahim (aka Abaraybone), and Kheddou along with extended Tinarewen members Sweiloum, Diarra and Bigga appear on the cover of Water Is Life as if they have just dismounted from a pack of wild camels. Clothed in turbans, scarves and flowing robes, Tinarewen seem hardened and at once calm. Japonais, front and center is the proverbial mad man, his eyes piercing, his hair shooting out of his head as if charged with electricity. Slightly hunched over and cradling his guitar like a shotgun, Japonais looks both worldly and otherworldly, slightly mad, very tired and deeply at peace.

"The Tinariwen story is already well marinated in startling myths," claims their website, "fierce nomadic desert tribesmen toting guns and guitars, Ghadaffi's poet-soldiers spreading their gospel of freedom throughout the world, turbaned rock'n'roll troubadours, Stratocaster on one shoulder, Kalashnikov on the other, 17 bullet wounds and rawest desert blues on earth. All this fabulous imagery is the modern equivalent of the legends that have always stuck to Tinariwen's people, the nomadic Touareg of the southern Sahara; the noble desert warrior, the blue man, the lord of the desert, mysterious, secretive, covered from head to toe with eyes only bared to the world.

But what of their music? Rocking and rolling as if on some desert caravan stoked by infernal flames and eternal rhythms, Tinariwen's songs are typically based on five-tone scales framed in chattering guitars over French and Tamashek vocals. There are echoes of other Malian artists like Amadou and Mariam, Oumou Sangaré, and Ali Farka Touré. This music jumps and burns your eyes clean; it rolls like the greatest US soul music, like Bo Diddley and the Temptations jamming under a sweltering sky.

"Cler Achel" is prime Tinariwen, all strangled guitar gurgles, handclaps, lush vocals, and that ever present eternal groove.

Tinariwen
"Cler Achel" (mp3)
from "Aman Iman: Water Is Life"
(World Village)

More On This Album

Os Mutantes at Barbican

The great Brazilian Tropicalia group Os Mutantes reunited for a 2006 concert at London's Barbican Theater, accompanied by stargazers Devendra Banhart and Noah Georgeson. As heard on "A Minha Menina," the sound was both tribal acoustic and fragrantly psychedelic, and wonderfully lustrous after 30 years away. Same as it ever was!

"A Minha Menina"