Italian producer Khalab has organized an orchestra of sorts in the West African M'berra Refugee Camp located in the southeast of Mauritania. The refugees there at present have mostly fled fighting in Mali, where Tuareg rebels attempted to establish an independent state in 2012, and where, as recently as March of 2020, protests over economic strife and national security concerns prompted a coup where both the President and the Prime Minister were arrested by mutinying army officers and forced to resign. Some might think these to be less than ideal circumstances to start a band, but the players on M'berra clearly beg to differ.
Khalab is noted as an enthusiastic appreciator of African music (as we all should be) and while I think many of the styles on M'berra are be captivating enough without his involvement, but it's hard to deny that he can assemble a great team when he wants to. M'berra primarily features Tuareg and Hassaniyya players, numbering fourteen in all, and includes contributions from members of the internationally renowned band Tartit. Specifically, Mohammed Issa Ag Oumar and Amano Ag Issa, the latter of whom is old enough to recall the Tuareg people's first encounters with Frenchmen. While it is easy to get swept up in the wailing, psychedelic guitars on this album, elements familiar to fans of other Tuareg bands like Tinariwen and Mdou Moctar, it is Amano Ag Issa's tehardent lute that is most handly captures the attention on tracks like "The Western Guys," where it's reedy twang is layered with a bucking breakbeat, an innovative pairing capable of kicking up a blinding sandstorm with all the body moving it can inspire.
The music of M'berra has been of interest to the musically omnivorous for decades now, with several collections of traditional sounds circulating since the camp's founding in the 1990s. It's been well documented, but very rarely allowed to mix and cross-pollinate with European music in a way that directly involves the people of the region. Khalab in collaboration with the musicians of the M'berra camp circumvent the artificial barricades erected by colonial interests and allow for a genuine exchange and trans-continental explication of art and ideas to transpire. There may be parts of the album that feel a little bit more like a gritty Bonobo bootleg and others that sound like an Imarhan demo recorded in a theater bathroom before a set, but these wonky, impromptu elements, especially when they are combined, impart a powerful spontaneity to the proceedings that make repeat listens as rewarding as the first. I can't lie. I can't get enough.
Like most of you, I'm someone who listens to music for hours at a time each day. And like most of you, I take it for granted most of the time. Sometimes when I listen to stuff like this- music made by people whose existence is more imperiled than my own, whose future is more uncertain than even what most of us experience in the US, and who don't have a home and who must make one for themselves in sound- it reminds me of just how important music really is. How it's never a waste of time to listen to, play, share, or talk about it. The world is a really terrible place to be most days. Music doesn't just make this ball of dirt better, it makes it livable.
