By Derk Richardson  October 13th, 2009 12:20 pm  |  Comments (2)

The October 13 U.S. release of Tinariwen’s Imidiwan: Companions, an hour-long CD packaged with a 30-minute DVD, marks a homecoming for the African desert blues band. In more ways than one.

Photo by Thomas Dorn.

Since 2001, when The Radio Tisdas Sessions brought Tinariwen to the attention of Western world music fans, the troupe of guitarists and singers has ranged far from its Saharan roots, traveling the globe and performing in venues as varied as the San Francisco Jazz Festival and a castle in Ireland, where the band opened for the Rolling Stones and played to an audience of 65,000.

Fans of West African guitar, especially the Delta blues–echoing riffs of the late Ali Farka Toure and his rising-star son Vieux Farka Toure, get their fix six times over from this string-bending ensemble.

Plus, Tinariwen, hailing from the nomadic Tuareg tribal culture, comes with a compelling 30-year back story rife with tales of exile, refugee camps in Libya, rebellion in northern Mali, sponsorship by the French band Lo’Jo, an appearance at the first Festival in the Desert outside Timbuktu, and much more.

Two polished studio CDs, 2004’s Amassakoul and 2007’s Aman Iman, enhanced Tinariwen’s reputation. But those productions slightly smoothed out the splintery grain of the band’s music. The difference on the new CD is subtle, but recorded in and around the band’s hometown, Tessalit, in the mountains of northeastern Mali, Imidiwan: Companions (World Village) is a stronger, edgier representation of Tinariwen’s music.

“We didn’t know what we were doing when we started,” Tinariwen cofounder, songwriter, and guitarist Ibrahim Ag Alhabig told UK journalist David Hutcheon for a feature in the August 2009 issue of Mojo. “We didn’t understand the [recording] process, we couldn’t take control. Sometimes, on Amassakoul and Aman Iman, we didn’t recognize ourselves so much.”

Continuing its return to roots, Tinariwen has scheduled appearances at four desert festivals in Africa: three in Mali—the Camel Fair in Tessalit, Dec. 29–Jan. 1; the Essouk Festival, Jan. 2–4; and the Festival in the Desert, Jan. 7–9—and one in Algeria, in Tamanrasset, the unofficial capital of the Tourareg people, Jan. 14–17, where Tinariwen has not played for nearly 30 years.

Watch: Tinariwen on YouTube from the Imidiwan: Companions DVD