JOTW

This week's JOTW is pretty unorthodox, so get ready to stretch your minds a little bit, and, as Nas and T-Boz did in Belly, go back to Africa. Tinariwen is a musical group from Mali that gets down with filthy electric guitar work and some tribal rhythms that are vaguely reminiscent of a different era about 20-30,000 years ago, when everybody was just trying to find some animals to eat and doing their best not to freeze their tits off. If you like this song, called Toumast, I would recommend getting acquainted with Ali Farka Touré, a fellow Malian, whom I know from his work with Ry Cooder on their collabo album, Talking Timbuktu. His influences included John Lee Hooker, a legendary blues man known for his simple grinding rhythms and dense guitar solos, and traditional Malian bard music. Rock and Blues are reflected in the music from which they evolved, and the mixture is about as unique and fascinating as it can get. If you like this shit as much as I do, get your documentary on, and check out Throw Down Your Heart; it's a movie about an American banjo player who travels around Africa and searches for the banjo's roots in several different regions.

Here it is- Tinariwen, off the album Aman Iman, Toumast.