24.01.2010
TAMIKREST BRING PURE ROCKING TUAREG FLAVOUR
Tamikrest is the first band from Africa on La Chunga. The deep, bluesy Desert Rock from Mali’s young Tuareg band Tamikrest is exotic, modern and earth.bound.
Tamikrest in Tamasheq language means junction, connection, knot, coalition. The group members come from different horizons (Mali, Niger, Algeria). Wanting to assume fully their Tuareg identity, they found in the rebel music Ishumar the means to express it.
“A desert hosts us, a language unites us, a culture binds us.”
Their story begins at Kidal, capital of the 8th Region of Mali, while making tea of course. Pino, Cheikh and Mossa had just finished a guitar workshop with Juhan Ecaré (guitarist for Meiway) when they decided to form a group with only two old “home made” guitars. And they got to work…
“Even though we are young, guitars still have six cords!”
After one year and a half of hard work, the group is complete and their repertory has grown to contain more than twenty-five original compositions. Though their music takes root in Ishumar Rock or Tuareg Blues, it borrows from various international influences as well as from neighbouring cultures.
Through the message of their songs, Tamikrest want to make Tamasheq poetry and culture accessible to inhabitants of a world larger than the immensity of the Saharian desert. Their debut "Adagh" takes Europe by storm and to quote the Myspace Site, "sounds like nothing you ever heard in your life".