 |
 |
 |
Mali is music:
The tam-tam is Mali’s heartbeat
The kora sings of the river Niger, her lyrical soul,
and
The electric guitar cries out of the harsh beauty of desert life.
 |
 |
Mali is really two countries in landscape, culture, politics and history divided by the great River Niger. The Niger also divides the two strong music traditions: the electric guitar of the desert - the Tinariwen sound - and the kora and acoustic guitar of the river region - the Ali Farka Touré sound.
Two worlds one country
The heterogenous south, where the Bambara share the land along the River Niger with Fulani nomadic pastoralists, the animist Dogon, Bozo fishermen and agriculturalist Songhai.
And the homogenous north where the Sahara desert has been home to the nomadic Tuareg for thousands of years.
These two worlds have, for hundreds - even thousands - of years, met and traded at Timbuktu, where the Sahara meets the River Niger and sub-Saharan Africa.
My Mali trips describe these two different worlds.
The festival tours concentrate on the south - Bamako, Djenne, the Dogon Country, the Niger River and Timbuktu.
My desert trips take you to the north, deep into the Sahara desert to the most important remaining cultural heartland of the Tuareg, the Valley of Tillemsi and the Adrar Des Iforas mountains in the region of Kidal.
