Bombino

Home. Where the heart is. For Bombino and most other Tuareg, there’s only one place that can be. In recent years, the rest of the world has largely written off that home as a hot and savage wasteland, a bolt hole for religious extremists and terrorists, a geopolitical video nasty with little to offer apart from the oil, gold and phosphates that lie beneath its soil. But Bombino would like us to take a closer look and think again.

Bringing people together seems to be one of Bombino’s natural gifts. In Europe, North America, Japan, China, Australia, even most recently, Argentina and Chile, the grainy hypnosis of his horizontal grooves, the virtuosity of his guitar style and aerobic explosiveness of his stage shows have hooked a broad gamut of fans ranging from grey-bearded rock and blues habitués, to world-music devotees to young hirsute hipsters – broad enough to include the Rolling Stones, Arcade Fire, Queens Of The Stone Age and the Black Keys (who produced Bombino’s 2013 album Nomad). Less well known is the fact that back in Niger, his music, which he sings exclusively in Tamashek, the language of the Tuareg, has found favor with every one the country’s many of ethnic groups, a feat of immense significance that no other Tuareg artist has managed to pull off. It could also be a small step in a grand dream – to see Africa regain the cultural, ethnic and economic interconnectedness that Bombino and so many others believe it once possessed before colonialism.