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Pop
Culture Press Around the World is
a regular feature of the Pop Culture Press
website and examines musical topics and artists
that fall outside of our normal editorial focus.
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By Andy Smith
It was a remarkable two days in mid-April when
two of the groups that helped to ignite my current
interest in world music came to Austin on successive
nights to play concerts. What made this especially
rewardiong is that Austin, as vibrant a music
center as it is, is often bypassed on many tour
routes which tend to focus on the east and west
coasts and the cities of the upper Midwest which
tend to have better public arts funding. And
what made the two evenings even more compelling
is that they provided music of incredible unfilitered,
authenticity straight from the source.
 The
first show saw the incomparable Ladysmith Black
Mambazo light up the stage at the nearly 100
year-old Paramount Theater, Austin's most historic
venue. There are few acts with the legacy of
Ladysmith Black Mambazo, currently in their
45th year of existence and still led by the
visionary Joseph Shabalala. Personally, I have
found the group's recent recordings to not be
particularly essential, simply because they
tend to be at the mercy of celebrity collaborators
and producers whose presence may sell records,
but who only get in the way of these marvelous
South Africans. But in concert, with just the
eight group members singing a capella, the sound
that emanates from the stage is remarkable.
The packed house, whose average age seemed
to be around 50, sat enraptured by the voices
and was also thoroughly charmed by the group's
playful interactions with each other and with
the crowd. With this being the last show of
the group's American tour, they were in full
celebratory mode. There were numerous highlights
during the over two-hour long show, although
hearing "Homeless" without Paul Simon's
voice cluttering it up was a real treat. Judging
by the line for autographs that snaked through
the lobby and up the balcony staircase, there
were plenty of satisfied concert-goers.
The following night bought Tinariwen's first
Austin appearance, and if the crowd response
to this fantastic group of Touareg nomads from
the Saharan desert of northern Mali is any indication,
it won't be the last. It seemed that much of
the crowd at the Hogg Auditorium, a fairly bare
bones old theater on the campus of the University
of Texas, didn't really know what to expect
when the six members of Tinariwen took the stage
in their flowing robes. For the first part of
the show the crowd and group seemed a bit restrained
and almost wary of each other, but after a few
songs, the invisible wall began to come down
as people along the sides of the all-seat venue
began to stand up and dance and inch closer
and closer to the stage drawn by the hypnotic,
undulating sound of the music.
The six-piece, all male version of Tinariwen
(the female background singers present on the
Amasakoul record were not present) consisted
of a Djembe (hand drum) player, bass player,
rhythm/drone guitarist, and three guys in the
middle, including band leader Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni,
who took turns either playing lead guitar and
singing lead vocals or singing backing vocals
and dancing. And after every song, Alhousseyni
said in slightly broken English, "Thank
you. Welcome to the desert," which eventually
became the concert's catch-all phrase.
 As
the three in the middle switched off, the mood
and energy of the music changed with the new
bandleader's personal style. With Alhousseyni
fronting the band with his deft acoustic leads,
the sound was subtler. When he stepped aside
to let the other two frontment take their turns,
the energy and the sounds shifted. The older
of the other two played a more serpentine, psychedelic
sound and the band responded by getting more
trancelike.
When the third (and youngest by probably twenty
years) stepped forward, he gave a look through
his turban at all assembled as if to say "Now,
you're gonna see something" and proceeded
to inject more energy and power into his playing.
He assumed a few stances, which were almost
textbook rock guitar poses, and the subsequent
raising of the band's energy level transferred
to the crowd, many of whom were stirring with
a desire to bust out of their seats into full
hippie dance twirl mode. By the time, the third
guy had led the band through a raging almost
double-time version of "Amassakoul 'n'
tenere," the lead-off track from Amassakoul,
any remaining skeptics in the crowd seems to
have been converted. Meanwhile, the second frontman
had started dancing and twirling at the edge
of the stage in response to the dancers who
now filled the aisle along the edge of the stage
and had let the sides of his robe fall off his
shoulders and cover his arms so his whole robe
filled and flowed as he spun around. If Tinariwen
could have stuck around for Eeyore's Birthday
Party, minds would have been blown all over
Pease Park.
By the time Tinariwen returned for an encore
that included the infectious hip-hop influenced
"Arawan," the crowd had gotten the
hang of the tricky rhythms and was clapping
along, and many of whom had been glued to their
seats were up and moving. With a few more songs,
Tinariwen would have had even the most reticent
observers dancing wildly, but unfortunately
everything ended in quite an orderly and academic
fashion
After the show, the three younger members
of the group stood outside the side entrance
to the theater having a cigarette as a number
of gleeful and frankly astonished looking fans
stood around and awkwardly attempted to breach
the language barrier. But even if they couldn't
communicate it effectively, it was clear that
many had been turned on to something truly exciting,
much the way I felt after first hearing Tinariwen
one afternoon while stuck in rush hour traffic
on the "All Things Considered" radio
show.
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