Ibrahim Ag Alhabib

Ibrahim Ag Alhabib (born 1960) is a Tuareg musician and the founder of the Saharan music group Tinariwen. While in exile, Ibrahim met other Tuareg youths with similar stories and experiences and when Libya's Muammar Gaddafi called for Tuareg rebels to join military training camps, he along with others joined the army. In 1990, after the fall of Gaddafi, Ag Alhabib was among those Tuaregs who returned to northern Mali and Niger.[1]

Early life

Ag Alhabib was born in Tessalit in the mountainous region of Mali in 1960 but left for Algeria with his grandmother at the age of four (a Tuareg rebel) after witnessing the execution of his father by the State army during a 1963 uprising in Mali.[1] As a child, Ag Ahabib saw a western film (The Fastest Guitar Alive) in which a cowboy (played by Roy Orbison) played a guitar with a gun. Ag Alhabib built his own guitar out of a tin can, a stick and bicycle brake wire. He started to play old Tuareg and modern Arabic pop tunes. Ag Alhabib first lived in Algeria in refugee camps near Bordj Badji Mokhtar and in the deserts around the southern city of Tamanrasset, where he received a guitar from a local Arab man.[2] Later, he resided with other Tuareg exiles in Libya and Algeria.

Career

Early music career

In the late 1970s, Ag Alhabib joined with other musicians in the Tuareg rebel community, exploring the radical chaabi protest music of Moroccan groups like Nass El Ghiwane and Jil Jilala; Algerian pop rai; and western rock and pop artists like Elvis Presley, Led Zeppelin, Carlos Santana, Dire Straits, Jimi Hendrix, Boney M, and Bob Marley. Ag Alhabib formed a group with Alhassane Ag Touhami and brothers Inteyeden Ag Ablil and Liya Ag Ablil in Tamanrasset, Algeria to play at parties and weddings.[3] Ag Alhabib acquired his first real acoustic guitar in 1979.[4] While the group had no official name, people began to call them Kel Tinariwen, which in the Tamashek language translates as "The People of the Deserts" or "The Desert Boys."

Tuareg rebel movement

In 1980, Libyan ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi put out a decree inviting all young Tuareg men who were living illegally in Libya to receive full military training. Gaddafi dreamed of forming a Saharan regiment, made up of the best young Tuareg fighters, to further his territorial ambitions in Chad, Niger, and elsewhere. Ag Alhabib and his bandmates answered the call and received nine months of training. They answered a similar call in 1985, this time by leaders of the Tuareg rebel movement in Libya, and met fellow musicians Keddou Ag Ossade, Mohammed Ag Itlale (aka "Japonais"), Sweiloum, Abouhadid, and Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni. All sang and played guitar in various permutations. The musicians joined together in a collective (now known as Tinariwen) in order to create songs about the issues facing the Tuareg people, built a makeshift studio, and vowed to record music for free for anyone who supplied a blank cassette tape. The resulting homemade cassettes were traded widely throughout the Sahara region.

In 1989, the collective left Libya and moved to Ag Alhabib's home country of Mali, where he returned to his home village of Tessalit for the first time in 26 years. In 1990 the Tuareg people of Mali revolted against the government, with some members of Tinariwen participating as rebel fighters.

Music career

After a peace agreement known as the Tamanrasset Accords was reached in January 1991, the musicians left the military and devoted themselves to music full-time.[5] In 1992 some of the members of Tinariwen went to Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire to record a cassette at JBZ studios. They played occasional gigs for far-flung Tuareg communities throughout the Sahara region, gaining word-of-mouth popularity among the Tuareg people.

References

  1. 1 2 Welsh, May Ying (9 January 2014). "'Orphans of the Sahara' - Behind the name". www.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 15 March 2017.
  2. ↑ Morgan, Andy (February 2007). "TINARIWEN – Sons of the desert". Songlines. Retrieved 25 January 2013.
  3. ↑ http://tinariwen.com/bio-eng/
  4. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsrxQaj2jCQ
  5. ↑ "Accord sur la cessation des hostilities entre le Gouvernement de la Republique du Mali d'une part, et le Mouvement Populaire de l'Azaouad et le Front Islamique Arabe d'autre part (Accords de Tamanrasset)". 06/01/1991. Retrieved 13 July 2018. Check date values in: |date= (help)
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