Concert | World Music: Tinariwen / Omar Souleyman / Toubab Krewe

Plagued by warfare and drought, the political and environmental plight of the Tuareg people of the Southern Sahara has been given new voice by the electrifying music of Tinariwen (pictured). Formed in 1979, Tinariwen rose to prominence in the 1980s as the pied pipers of a new political and social conscience in the southern Sahara, becoming icons to a generation of young Tuareg living in exile in Algeria and Libya. In the early 2000s Tinariwen attracted a following outside Africa, first in the world music community and then in the wider rock scene, thanks to frequent tours and appearances at festivals in Europe and the US. Tinariwen sing about the suffering and exile of their people, the semi-nomadic Kel Tamashek, and about the beauty of their desert home.

Since 1994, Omar Souleyman and his musicians have reigned as a staple of Syria‘s dance-folk-pop scene. To date, they have issued more than five-hundred studio and live-recorded cassette albums, easily spotted in the shops of any Syrian city. A groundbreaking musician, Souleyman melds classical Arabic mawal-style vocalization with Syrian dabke (the regional folkloric dance and party music), Iraqi choubi, along with contemporary Arabic, Kurdish and Turkish styles.

Toubab Krewe has set a new standard for fusions of rock 'n' roll and West African music. The North Carolina musicians developed their unique sound over the course of numerous extended trips to Mali, Guinea and the Ivory Coast, where they immersed themselves in the local culture and studied and performed with native musical luminaries. Their seminal new studio album, TK2, is a genre and mind-bending example of what the instrumental group's "futuristic, psychedelic, neo-griot frenzy" (Village Voice) is all about. Featuring an uber-unique and seamless mix of ancient and modern instrumentation and sounds, TK2 defines Toubab Krewe as "one of the most innovative bands in music today" (Honest