Tinariwen, with their acclaimed brand of desert blues, may have been the band that provided the soundtrack for the Tuareg rebellions in Mali and Niger, but new stars such as Bombino are looking both back to the Tuaregs’ tumultuous past and ahead to their future.
Born on New Year’s Day in 1980 into a family of 17 brothers and sisters, Omara “Bombino” Moctar lived a typical Tuareg life in Niger until the 1984 drought killed most of the region’s livestock.
Struggling and starving, the Tuareg people in Mali and Niger began to organise themselves for rebellions against their countries’ governments. They felt these governments were marginalising them so they began to use songs to spread their freedom-fighting messages.
Songs became so central to the rebellion that the word ishumar, which was used to describe the style of song, eventually became the word for rebel fighters.
By 1990, the Tuaregs in Mali and Niger were fighting a war against their respective governments and many were forced to flee into exile. Bombino, at the age of 10, fled with his father and grandmother to live with relatives in Algeria. It was here that he encountered the electric guitar for the first time and began to teach himself to play the ishumar style of song, made popular by Tinariwen.
From rebellion to exile
In 1995 the Niger government signed a peace treaty with the rebels and the Tuareg people began to move back to the country. It was during this time that Bombino secured his first guitar from an uncle, who was an artist, and began his career as a musician.
But the young Tuareg soon packed up and went to live in Libya, where he worked as a herder and had access to music by Jimi Hendrix and Dire Straits, which he soaked up. He would return briefly to Niger, but when the 2007 Tuareg rebellion began he went into exile in Burkina Faso.
Bombino met representatives from the Sublime Frequencies label and was recorded performing at a wedding in Agadez in northern Niger. This recording would eventually become his first international release, the magnificent Guitars from Agadez Vol 2, which was credited to Group Bombino and released in October 2009.
It was also the year that filmmaker Ron Wyman discovered Bombino living in Burkina Faso. Wyman had been looking for him for more than a year after hearing a cassette of his music while travelling near Agadez.
This resulted in Wyman flying Bombino to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to begin work on what would become his new album, Agadez (Putamayo).
“This album was about pouring out what has been in my heart for several years,” Bombino recently told online magazine Dusted. “People pay attention to music, looking for leadership, and I am aware of this when I write my songs. I think and I hope that my music helped to convince people that the war was not worth fighting — that it was time to return to Agadez, create tourism there and so forth,” said Bombino. “It’s time to return to home and rebuild our country.”
Peace and preservation
These days, as a father of a young daughter, Bombino is a lot less gung-ho than during his days in the rebellion. “We fought for our rights, but we have seen that guns are not the solution. We need to change our system,” said Bombino. “Our children must go to school and learn about their Tuareg identity.”
This is also a theme he explores in his new song, Assalam Felawan, which means “peace to you”. In it Bombino greets the Turaeg people by asking them how they manage to cope with the hardships in their lives: injustice, discrimination and a lack of water, healthcare and education.
He ends the song by asking: “Please preserve our culture/ preserve it don’t let it disappear/ we thank our parents who raised us amidst these difficulties/ requiring much patience/ don’t let the efforts of our parents disappear for nothing.”
Bombino wrote the song during the Tuareg rebellion in Niger in 2007, and the pain caused by the war really does pour out of it.
The same applies to album opener Ahoulaguine Akaline, a song written by guitar elder Intayaden during his exile in Libya, which was caused by the drought of 1973.
As a lilting guitar riff licks the desert air, Bombino sings: “I greet my country where I left my parents/ I greet my country where I left my home/ I greet my country where I left my community/ You know that I am suffering from it.”
The album does have some lighter moments, such as the love song Tar Hani, in which Bombino asks his lover to hold him in her heart even after her death. Its funky blues guitar lines drag the listener along for the ride.
With this record, which has raised Bombino’s international profile and allowed him the opportunity to tour the world playing his songs, it is clear that he is ready to claim his place among Tinariwen, Tamikrest and Terakaft, the rock stars of the Tuareg world.