About

A TAV Essential Listening Album.

“The context of Bombino's music isn't incidental; it's essential to understanding the impact and poignancy of Deran, his latest full-length. Sung exclusively in the Tuareg language of Tamashek, songs such as "Tehigren" ("Trees") and "Imajghane" ("The Free People") distill Bombino's memories and impressions of his homeland. Fluid and bluesy, his guitar playing is more than just an agile dance between rhythm and melody. It speaks and breathes across centuries. In Tuareg culture, guitarists and the songs they sing have long been the means by which traditions, mores and revolutionary spirit have been passed down.

On "Oulhin" ("My Heart"), Bombino evokes the warmth of tribal bonds among the Tuareg, as well as the agony of internecine strife that has splintered the Saharan region. Amid mildly distorted rock hooks and sashaying syncopation, Bombino's internationally sourced band — including Illias Mohammed on guitar, Youba Dia on bass, Corey Wilhelm on drums, Hassan Krifa on percussion, and Mohammed Araki on keyboard — inject an upbeat tune with a heart-piercing sentiment. "My heart is burning / It burns because of my brothers / My brothers who do not love each other," Bombino sings in his high, sweet voice, and the accumulated ache of decades echoes through it.” – NPR

“Recorded in Casablanca at a studio owned by the king of Morocco, “Deran” was produced by Mr. Herman, and presents what Bombino considers to be his true voice, without being filtered through the sheen of a famous producer. “Deran” displays the breadth of Bombino’s stylistic approaches: the electrifying “Imajghane” is a rollicking blues-rock anthem, while “Midiwan” sounds like an acoustic desert campfire singalong and “Tehigren” features a lilting bounce that the band has called “Tuareggae.”

At the Brooklyn concert in honor of “Deran,” the guitarist was dressed in a plum-colored knee-length waxed-cotton bazin robe and matching pants. Sporting a white tagelmust — the traditional Tuareg head wrap — worn around his neck as a scarf and dangling precariously close to the tops of his leather loafers, he resembled what “Purple Rain”-era Prince might have looked like if Minneapolis were closer to North Africa than North Dakota. His guitar playing was nearly as incendiary as the Purple One, too: When his backing band leavened their hypnotically funky desert blues with an amiable reggae beat, Bombino kicked up his knees in a high-stepping skank, his spindly fingers a dizzying blur on the strings..” – NY Times

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