Etran Finatawa - Nomad's Blues from Niger

Songlines Magazine review of Desert Crossroads www.songlines.co.uk/topoftheworld/top-of-the-world.php?id=33

in UK press

'Wailing, twisting songs as gritty as the desert wind'. 4**** stars
Robin Denselow SONGLINES June issue 08
Guardian 4****stars 18/4/08
Financial Times 4****stars 18/4/08
Jazzwise 4****stars
Evening Standard 4****stars 25/4/08

Desert Crossroads on InsideWorldMusic.com

“The follow-up to their Introducing album, Desert Crossroads, continues Etran Finatawa’s musical journey through the Sahara and beyond. (...) Fans of Etran Finatawa will be more than satisfied here. Begin your global wanderings in the Saharan desert and say hello Niger’s premiere group.”

Desert Crossroads in The Pasadena Weekly (4/17)

“…in crafting a meatier, more musically engaging follow-up to their 2006 debut, they've not only created more interesting music for themselves, they've also expanded the sonic palette for Saharan desert blues.”

Comments and reviews on Etran Finatawa´s US debut tour in April 2008 :

Preview in Time Out NY (4/18)
“… Fittingly, most of the lyrics on the band’s sophomore release, Desert Crossroads (Riverboat; U.K.), exhibit an unease with life in urban Babylon, in addition to revealing the realities of dispersion and exile that the great masses of Tuaregs have endured in countries like Mali, Libya and Niger (the latter being where Etran Finatawa formed). Hypnotic blues riffs add a dry, internationalist dimension to the communal chants and percussion, as if the musicians had been lured away from a campfire or what we stateside fans think of as a front porch. With life in the desert at its most dire, it’s clear that these North African cattle folk plugged in out of necessity.”

New York Times concert review (4/21)
“...Etran Finatawa, a band from Niger featuring Wodaabes (like Bammo Angonla, foreground) and Tuaregs, performing at Symphony Space.
For centuries Tuareg and Wodaabe nomads have traversed the Sahel grasslands and Sahara in northern Africa, herding cows, camels and goats, and sometimes feuding over water and pastures. They now face the erosion of their age-old cultures and the desertification of their lands. Etran Finatawa responds in its songs while it symbolically reconciles the two groups. “A man is nothing when he is alone/People need other people,” they sang in “Jama’aare,” from their second album, “Desert Crossroads” (Riverboat/World Music Network).
Many of Etran Finatawa’s lyrics insist on the value of heritage. Meanwhile, the music looks forward, altering that heritage by bringing together Wodaabe and Tuareg musicians and by using instruments that were introduced to Tuareg music in the 1970s: electric guitar and bass.
From stoner rock in California to African nomad songs, the desert fosters drones. Most of Etran Finatawa’s songs revolve around one of Alhousseini Mohamed Anivolla’s repeating guitar lines: not chords, but picked, syncopated notes and trills. While the guitar lines probably derive from regional fiddle music, Americans might also hear a kinship with the oldest Delta blues.
(...)There were also Wodaabe songs that began with a lone, unaccompanied singer sustaining a note in a long crescendo until the other voices converged to join him: the sound of a community forging itself in a wilderness.”

Washington Post concert review (4/23)
“Although the Tuareg and the Wodaabe nomadic tribes have occasionally fought over land in the Sahel and Sahara regions of Niger, members of both tribes came together in 2004 to form a 10-piece band called Etran Finatawa, which means "the stars of tradition." Monday night at Iota, the six-member touring version of the group played two impressive sets in their Washington area debut.

Featuring Tuareg musicians on electric guitar and bass, and Wodaabe and Tuareg musicians on percussion and vocals, the group combined elements from the cultures of both peoples to create hypnotic, syncopated songs with elements that vaguely resembled Middle Eastern prayer, Mississippi blues and West African folklore. While it was impossible for all but speakers of Tamashek and Fulfulde to understand the band's lyrics about saving their culture and environment, Etran Finatawa performed with a palpable passion.

(...)

Each tribe brought a different aspect to the music as well. Alhousseini Mohamed Anivolla, a Tuareg, did not use his right-hand fingers together to strum the guitar, but instead constantly moved those fingers separately to help create mesmerizing, repeating guitar lines. Anivolla enhanced the trancelike power of those tones with his Arabic-influenced vocals on songs such as "Iguefan." Wodaabe singer Bammo Angonla sang in a less accessible high, nasal voice while simultaneously creating rhythm by shaking metal rings that hung from an anklet. He was joined by one Wodaabe percussionist playing a calabash floating in a larger calabash full of water, and another who tapped out intricate rhythms with metal rings on his fingers against a calabash sitting on a table. The group's sound coalesced most distinctively when they combined all these elements, and then added more. On several songs near the end of the closing set, a Tuareg percussionist switched to a second guitar, Angonla added complicated hand-clapped beats, and the entire group gloriously chanted layered group vocals.”


Preview for LA show in The LA Weekly (4/24)
“When you’re battling for your cultural survival, music can be a powerful weapon. With their pastoral nomadism under extreme duress from desertification, societal upheaval and political conflict, the Tuareg and Wodaabe peoples of northwest Africa struggle to balance their traditions with the pull of the modern world. Bands like Tinariwen and Etran Finatawa have become guitar-wielding standard bearers of social continuity, sharing their stories with a compelling, trance-y desert-blues choogle that stretches and contracts like the Sahara’s endless horizon. Unlike Tinariwen’s all-Tuareg lineup, Niger-based Etran Finatawa includes members from both groups: The Wodaabe influences give the group’s percussive cross-rhythms additional texture and complexity, while the vocals possess more of a keening nasal twang than those of their colleagues in the groove. The just-released Desert Crossroads finds Etran Finatawa’s mojo on the rise — charming, urgent, dark and rockin’ — a celebration of life and expression of the profound pain of separation and loss.”


Introducing/World Music Network (released in 2006)

Songlines Magazine review of Introducing Etran Finatawa www.songlines.co.uk/topoftheworld/top-of-the-world.php?id=17

"One of this year's most refreshing records." 5***** stars Evening Standard (UK)

"worth checking out" 4**** stars The Guardian (UK)

"Electric guitars and traditional instrument sent wine like old friends as rustic call-and-response vocals stir up the desert heat. Comparisons aside, this debut is dynamite." (Global Rhythm, Sep.2006)

"Introducing Etran Finatawa is a musical experience full of life in a desert environment that is seemingly lifeless." (Inside World Music)

"Electric guitars and traditional instruments entwine like old friends as rustic call-and –response vocals stir up the desert heat. Comparisions aside, this debut is dynamite." (Global Rhythm (New York) – September 06)

"Just listen to the guitar solos on A Dunya and you'll be instantly seduced by the beauty of this music which has its roots in the West African country of Niger. Marvel at Iledeman and in the driving 12-bar structure you can hear the real roots of American blues." (Sydney Morning Herald – August 2006)

"It seems Etran Finatawa are on a mission of far greater urgency than just making us dance to their gorgeous grooves". (The Independent, 31 July 2006, Feature by Andy Morgan)