Abacabok

Tartit | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 24, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Crammed Discs
• ASIN: B000IHZJ1K
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #252,520 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Since coming to the attention of Western audiences as part of the Festival In The Desert, the popularity of this mixed-sex band from the Timbuktu region of the West African nation of Mali has nearly equaled that of Tinariwen, another Tuareg (desert nomad) ensemble. Their sound, while electrifyingly sensual and riveting, is less frenetic and more mellow than that of their more famous compatriots. This second album, recorded studio live in a mobile studio, captures their folkloric, acoustic-electric mix to perfection. In an interesting switch for Muslim tribes-people, the men are veiled while the women go bare-faced and female voices, led by the astonishing Fadimata Walett Oumar, dominate the chant-like vocals. Feverish, repetitive rhythms are pounded out by seated women drummers, wreathed in handclaps and high-pitched, trilling ululations, crowned by guitars, traditional lutes and the imzad, a fiddle graced with but one string and seemingly infinite possibilities. Tartit’s plangent sound is often lumped under the term "African blues", a marketing cliché that has long since become tiresome and anyway does not remotely apply. Their songs, often built on five-tone scales, discuss female empowerment, family matters, gossip and the vagaries of fate. These people are stark realists but there is not a single note of complaint, however dignified, within earshot. --Christina Roden

Amazon.com

Since coming to the attention of Western audiences as part of the Festival In The Desert, the popularity of this mixed-sex band from the Timbuktu region of the West African nation of Mali has nearly equaled that of Tinariwen, another Tuareg (desert nomad) ensemble. Their sound, while electrifyingly sensual and riveting, is less frenetic and more mellow than that of their more famous compatriots. This second album, recorded studio live in a mobile studio, captures their folkloric, acoustic-electric mix to perfection. In an interesting switch for Muslim tribes-people, the men are veiled while the women go bare-faced and female voices, led by the astonishing Fadimata Walett Oumar, dominate the chant-like vocals. Feverish, repetitive rhythms are pounded out by seated women drummers, wreathed in handclaps and high-pitched, trilling ululations, crowned by guitars, traditional lutes and the imzad, a fiddle graced with but one string and seemingly infinite possibilities. Tartit’s plangent sound is often lumped under the term "African blues", a marketing cliché that has long since become tiresome and anyway does not remotely apply. Their songs, often built on five-tone scales, discuss female empowerment, family matters, gossip and the vagaries of fate. These people are stark realists but there is not a single note of complaint, however dignified, within earshot. --Christina Roden

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding rhythms from the desert, May 12, 2007

By 

popculturemaven "from trash to high art, I'm ... (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Abacabok (Audio CD)

Tartit comes from roughly the same geographical area as Tinariwen. There, that was easy, wasn't it?

Not exactly. Tinariwen is well-known for their electrification of traditional Touareg forms. Tartit is much more acoustic and traditional. It is an entrancing, enchanting music that pulls at you more and more as you listen to it. The modal scales and massed vocals can be the perfect antidote to mass-produced Western pop/pap. Abacabok is definitely worth your time.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the Narcotic of the Sahel, June 18, 2009

By 

Pharoah S. Wail (Inner Space) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Abacabok (Audio CD)

Spending the past week with Oumou Sangare's beautiful new Seya has spurned me into action. I've had Tartit's Abacabok for too long to go any longer without reviewing it.

There are 2 ways I fantasize about the Festival in the Desert. There are the big stage bands and there are the smaller happenings. Oumou Sangare and her band throw it down on a major level. They're obviously one of the big stage bands that could get 5,000 people dancing for 2 hours. When I think of Tartit, I think of them on a more intimate level. Tartit is at its best when playing something slow and hypnotically repetitive. They have a gritty earthiness, as if their music crawled up out of a crack in the sun-baked Malian soil. When they tour the USA they play very nice venues like the one at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk, but they don't need to. I tend to think of Tartit as being the ultimate band to play for 20 people from midnight to 2 or 3am under the desert sky. The crackling of the nighttime campfire would be as much a part of their music as their vocals. Their electric guitarist could stand barefoot in the dirt and run an $80 amp off of a car battery and melt souls. He is just the sort of ethereal-yet-dirty-a$$ desert blues player that should frighten the legions of gentrified electric guitar wieneys that populate the USA in recent decades. DEEP is the level of his expression.

For me, the first half of Abacabok is up and down. A few tracks have a lighter feel to them... a feel with which I've never been in love. Then Afel Bocoum is the guest lead vocal on track 5, and from track 6 onward we have a beautiful, hypnotic album. An album that conjures images of the Sahel, salt caravans, relentless wind, heat and camels. Still from Mali, yes, but the Tuareg Blues of Tartit have a more North African feel than the musics of Sangare, Toure, Diabate, etc...

Tartit is mellow body music. Oumou Sangare can make you dance until you sweat. Tartit is more likely to make you close your eyes and realize you've been rocking back and forth like a student in a madrassa for the past 20 minutes. Not so frenetic or frantic as those students, though. Calmly, quietly, as if mesmerized.