Etran Finatawa: Desert Crossroads

Copy at Case Memorial Library
Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times: "Two groups of desert nomads meld their music in the sparse, spellbinding songs of Etran Finatawa, a band from Niger. … For centuries Tuareg and Wodaabe nomads have traversed the Sahel grasslands and Sahara in northern Africa, herding cows, camels and goats, and sometimes feuding over water and pastures. They now face the erosion of their age-old cultures and the desertification of their lands. Etran Finatawa responds in its songs while it symbolically reconciles the two groups. 'A man is nothing when he is alone/People need other people,' they sang in 'Jama’aare,' from their second album, 'Desert Crossroads.' … Many of Etran Finatawa’s lyrics insist on the value of heritage. Meanwhile, the music looks forward, altering that heritage by bringing together Wodaabe and Tuareg musicians and by using instruments that were introduced to Tuareg music in the 1970s: electric guitar and bass. … Most of Etran Finatawa’s songs revolve around one of Alhousseini Mohamed Anivolla’s repeating guitar lines: not chords, but picked, syncopated notes and trills" (4/21/08).