Tartit

Nothing is more evocative of the expanses of the Sahara desert than the music of Tartit, a Tuareg band consisting of five women and four men residing in the Timbuktu region of Mali.

Tartit play hypnotic, trance-inducing music: the women sit down, sing, and play cyclic rhythms on their tinde drums, while the men sing and play string instruments, both acoustic and electric—most notably the traditional imzad, a small one-stringed gourd-fiddle. The men are veiled, the women aren't (Tuareg society is one of the few Saharan cultures in which women are allowed to choose and divorce their husbands). The band's dynamic interplay between its male and female members is echoed by its dynamic interplay between tradition and modernity, bringing a modern African pop sensibility to some very traditional material.

The band was formed in a refugee camp, during the Tuareg uprising in the early '90s, and first came to international attention in 2000, when it released its debut album Ichichilla. Since then Tartit have toured Europe several times, most recently as part of the Desert Blues shows. The group's sophomore album, 2006's Abacabok, was recorded in Bamako. Mali and in the southern Sahara desert by Congotronics producer Vincent Kenis, on his mobile studio. —Courtesy Calabash Music