Toumast

But, says lead singer Moussa Ag Keyna who together with female singer Aminatou Goumar and French producer Dan Levy has created some sublime new African desert sounds, behind that smile, the nomad on his camel hides many problems.

“He hides his sadness over the way the Touareg life has changed, the way the desert is slowly swallowing everything up, the political repression of our people. No one wants the Touaregs to find their own place in the desert, to find a way of staying there.” Moussa’s voice fades away, a deep, almost brusque sadness penetrating the air. He begins to tell his story, a story of loss, of struggle, of separation, but eventually, a story with a new musical beginning.

Moussa was born in a wide valley on the border between Mali and Niger, deep in the Sahara desert. Up until the age of 15, his life was unremarkable, the life of a desert pastoralist, living the way his elders had lived for centuries. And music was part of this life.

“Touaregs,” says Moussa, “are people who sing. We sing as we follow our camels, going to find water, that’s just part of our life, our culture: we sing.”

But the desert life was hard. Severe drought and the resulting decimation of livestock during the 1970s and ’80s caused people to scatter, moving north to Libya and Algeria in the hope of finding work. Others fled political persecution, as the Touareg people fought the Mali and Niger governments for recognition of their own territory. Many young Touaregs, like Moussa, joined the Touareg Liberation Front, training in Libyan military camps.

“In 1987, age 15, I left home to go and do my military training, to learn the modern war technique,” says Moussa. “When I was in Libya, I finished my military training and I took up the guitar and that’s when I started to sing the revolutionary songs, with my group, Toumast. This was 1990 and we were just 17 or 18 years old.”

“But,” he says, “I never gave music much importance in that period, I gave my energy to fighting. But when I wasn’t using my gun I would sing the songs of the revolution with an acoustic guitar, with the other soldiers. When we weren’t firing Kalashnikovs, I played music, wrote songs, about what was going on in our war.”

Music plays an important role in Touareg culture, and became an essential part of the long, drawn-out battle with the political regimes. Music was the message-bearer of the Liberation Front, it was the wind upon which the stories of success and failure, the call to arms, and the Liberation Front’s purpose was carried. For Moussa, making music was a way that he could help his people find their freedom.

“When I started singing with my guitar, it was to help the Touaregs find their liberty. Music was never a job for me, I never thought I would earn money from it. For me, it was just a way of passing on a message, so that all the nomads of our land could find their freedom, so that they could stay peacefully in their own land, and to pass on a message of peace to the world.”

The early Toumast songs called on men to fight alongside the rebels, at the same time explaining that they weren’t trouble-makers but people who wanted to find a safe place to live. They were revolutionary songs with purpose and intent. But when Moussa was badly injured during battle in 1994, he was evacuated to France and his way of fighting his people’s war came to an end.

“I was a fighter until I was injured, that’s why I came to France and that was when I started to make music. That’s how that album was born. I said to myself, ‘there was a time when I wanted to fight with my gun. Today I have to fight with my new weapon, my guitar.'”

Moussa’s outlook, and his music, changed when the Touareg Liberation Front and the government of Niger signed a peace treaty in 1995. He was preparing to go back to Niger when, three months after the treaty was signed, twelve of his cousins and members of Toumast were assassinated.

He knew then that he would never be able to go back to his homeland, and his music became a poignant expression of the disappointment he felt towards the government, towards his people and for the situation in general, which showed no sign on improving.