Links
More about Etran Finatawa on:
World Music Network: Etran Finatawa's Producer. CDs, MP3, Videos and more.
and http://www.worldmusic.net/wmn/news/item/etran
Press Comments and Reviews
press reviews of Tarkat tajje-Let's go released on March 15th 2010
"Gourma explodes into a thrilling spacey mesh of lead lines and rhythmic chords unlike anything we have heard from other "desert blues" bands before."
(Niger Williamson, Songlines, March 2010)
Press reviews on Etran Finatawa's Klangkosmos Tour 2010 in Germany
"Am meisten ueberraschte zu welcher orchestralen Fuelle die wenigen Instrumente und die Gesaenge fanden!"
Rhein-Sieg Rundschau 9th march 2010
Comments and reviews on Etran Finatawa´s tour in southern Africa in sep/oct09
Pretoria news, 9th sept 2009
"Etran Finatawa is a must for anyone who is craving something new, something gentle."
Mail&Guardian, South Africa (18th sep 2009)
"...Etran Finatawa´s music; it comes straight from the desert. Having stood among the crowd at their first South african gig, I know what he means. When I closed my eyes, I was transported back to the Sahara, where the rhythms of the camels and the expansive sky are beyond words, but not beyond music." (Lloyd Gedye)
in CITIZEN, Citi Vibe 28th sept 2009:
"They come dressed in bright long garments and have down to earth manners. It is almost as if they do not know that they are international stars and the world is warming up to their music."
Review on boston.com:Banding together Nomads unite in Etran Finatawa
Reviews of Desert Crossroads/Riverboat World Music Network (released April 2008)
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
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)
Washington Post concert review (4/23)
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
“… 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.”
“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)