IN A DESERT CAMP 330 KILOMETRES
WEST OF TIMBUKTU, A SMALL BAND
OF MEN ARE TINKERING WITH WIRES,
JERRY CANS, RADIO TRANSISTORS
AND MOTORBIKE BATTERIES.
..........................................
Kaftans shroud their movements and
turbans cloak their faces. The dialect they’re
conversing in is a medley of Arabic and
Tamasheq; the ideals they’ve converged to
exalt: faith, courage, revolution, sacrifice.
A few have come bearing axes.
“One of the challenges of making music in
the desert is that instruments rarely work
properly,” says Jean-Marc Caimi, a French
musician and photographer who visited the
Mauritanian camp after hearing about the
music scene developing there. “The heat
melts wires so they make a constant buzzing
sound. Things come unstuck and unglued.
It makes the music unstable.” If it sounds like
Caimi is begrudging the rumpty set-up, he’s
not: one doesn’t visit a Saharan refugee camp
expecting stability. “Desert sand gets into the
microphones, into the sounding boards, into
the amplifiers.” Providing the wiring’s been
done right – and that someone doesn’t need
their motorbike for a bit – the notes come
pulsed through granules of sand. It’s desert
music, in the most literal sense.
The Mbera refugee camp took form in 2012,
when conflict in neighbouring northern
Mali started compelling folk east. A nudge
in from Mauritania’s south-east border, on
the edge of the world’s largest desert, it’s
a region that, if not quite uninhabitable,
is certainly inhospitable. Water is scarce,
vegetation sparse, and summer temperatures
reach into the 50s. Mauritania’s capital,
Nouakchott, is a two-day drive away. Yet
for half a decade, this isolated sprawl of
makeshift shelters has been a relative haven
for legions of displaced Malians. Recent
estimations put the number of refugees
in Mbera at around 50,000, making it
Mauritania’s fifth largest town by population.
All things considered, it’s an improbable
locale for a burgeoning music scene.
Like many of Mbera’s musicians, Alioun
Old Mohammed cobbled together his first
guitar from unconventional parts. For his
instrument’s body he scrounged a five-litre
plastic tank. For its neck he bored in a stick;
for strings he made do with some coils of
wire. No mean engineering feat for your
everyman; one verging on the audacious for a
blind one. When it came to learning to play,
Old Mohammed coached himself to high
shreddability by noodling along to the radio.
These days he’s the electric guitarist and chief
composer of Tawhiye Azawad, a Tuareg outfit
that plays odes of longing and devotion to
Azawad, their yet-to-be-realised homeland.The aptitude in Mbera for repurposing
discarded items into instruments shouldn’t
be surprising: resourcefulness has been
prized among desert-dwellers since the Old
Testament. The more significant change is a
cultural one. West Africa is a region where
custom sways hard, and in Tuareg tradition
only those of griot ancestry are permitted
to play lute-like instruments. But with the
commingling of Mbera’s diverse range of
people, Caimi believes these strictures are
becoming less defined. “Traditional songs
are still only played by certain groups,” he
concedes. “But otherwise everybody plays
together and shares the same gear. The fact
of being a refugee, of sharing a common story
of suffering, makes the ethnic or gender issue
seem pretty petty.” Rigid thinking can’t be
easy when your livelihood is so underpinned
by instability. According to the UNHCR, more
than 4,500 Malian refugees arrived in Mbera
camp between September 2016 and January
2017 – the largest influx of exiles seen since- For now, the uncertainty continues.
One musician who has benefited from the
easing of convention is Mohammed Isa.
Not from griot stock, Isa’s family didn’t
initially take to his guitar playing. As a kid,
he had to leave his instrument outside for
fear of angering his father. One day, a heavy
downpour started. Isa thought his guitar was
done for. But in the midst of the deluge, he
saw his old man duck outside and bring it in.
“That was a beautiful day,” he told Caimi.
“My music was finally accepted.” •Page 064
Mohammed Isa Ag
Omar, one of the
camp’s most respected
musicians. His band
Imarhan Timbuktu
has found a degree of
success over the years,
touring in Europe and
performing in Mali’s
Festival au Désert.
Opposite
Alioun Old Mohammed,
blind guitarist for the
group Tawhiye Azawad
(Unity for Azawad).