AfricaIs aCountry

Tuareg Nationalism

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Tuareg Nationalism

By
Sean Jacobs


A quick survey of Western media suggests Tuareg nationalist claims don’t carry the same weight as Malian, Nigerian or Algerian claims on Tuareg territory. For example, the current violence in Niger and Mali are covered as either a humanitarian crisis (sympathy for Tuareg refugees), Gaddafi’s legacy (rumored weapons support for the rebels from his fallen regime) or through the prism of the War on Terror (armed Tuareg groups get conflated with Al Qaeda in the Maghreb). Meanwhile, if you’re still wondering about who the Tuareg is, you have sort of been already introduced to them via the music of Tinariwen, who are unashamed about their nationalist politics. In a recent interview, Tinariwen’s Alhousseini Ag Abdoullahi says:

[W]e are military artists! In 1992, we saw that we would be much more useful to the cause by spreading our culture around the world. Today, if we see that our brothers need us armed rather than as musicians, we will go to the front line because we are always ready to answer the call of the preservation of our land, our values and our culture. This is what we do through music and we will do it again with weapons!

Most recently, Tinariwen won a Grammy for Best World Music Album and collaborrated with TV on the Radio. And when you — if you live in the US — were blinking they were discussing their time in Gaddafi’s training camps on Colbert Nation.

* For those in or traveling to New York City: They’re performing around here on April 12th.

Further Reading

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After Paul Biya

Cameroon’s president has ruled for over four decades by silence and survival. Now, with dynastic succession looming and no clear exit strategy, the country teeters between inertia and implosion.

Leapfrogging literacy?

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Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

The king of Kinshasa

Across five decades, Chéri Samba has chronicled the politics and poetry of everyday Congolese life, insisting that art belongs to the people who live it.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.