Released: 25/03/22
Originally released in 2004, Amassakoul was the now-legendary Tuareg band Tinariwen’s breakthrough album, and now, almost 20 years later, it has been reissued, remastered and repackaged with a bonus unreleased track, exclusive photos and brand-new liner notes.
Over recent centuries, colonialism has seen the Tuareg’s ancestral territory partitioned into distinct countries – Mali, Algeria, Libya, Niger. This drawing of borders has turned the Tuareg into ishumar, a displaced people in search of a homeland lost to them. Tinariwen’s music, then – a blend of West African traditional music and electrified rock’n’roll sometimes referred to as ‘desert blues’ – speaks directly to this feeling of longing, and two decades later the astonishing power of their music remains undiminished.