Souad Asla: Lemma

This is a great recording, issued in 2018 under the Musique du Monde series from Buda Musique and Universal France, and comprises a remarkable ensemble of eleven women, led by Souad Asla, from the Saoura region of southwestern Algeria not far from the border with Morocco, with most coming from the city of Béchar or the nearby town of Kenadsa.  This is a harsh region of the Sahara, but occupied with people who have a rich culture among trade routes and, more lately, coal mines, which drew a diversity of workers and others from southenr Europe, as well as Berbers, Jews and sub-Saharan blacks.

The word lemma refers both to the ensemble and to gatherings that, as the very informative liners states, the purpose of which "is to meet and together ward off the spell that threatens to spoil the unity of the moment."  This music is very much a unity, the tightly devised rhythms for percussive instruments and hand-claps, the chants and singing, and the lyrics which are largely tied to everyday activities and events.  It is hypnotizing, mesmerizing and evocative of deeply-rooted tradition, which Asla and her troupe are devoted to preserving amid dramatic change and for which they are to be thanked and commended.

Hoggar: Music of the Tuareg

This fascinating recording is about as far removed from the recent spectacle of the Grammy Awards as you can possibly get and is a reminder to me of why becoming familiar with so-called "world music," especially indigenous music, nearly thirty years ago was such a life-changing transformation in my music listening experience.

The term "Tuareg" is used in broad brush for peoples from five distinct confederations in the region encompassed by the African nations of Mali, Libya, Burkina Faso, Niger and Algeria with a focus on this recording on the Hoggar who live in the mountains of that name in Algeria.

This 1994 release is from the French label Chant du Monde and this is particularly striking in that Algeria was a French colony and only gained its independence in 1962 after a particularly brutal war of liberation.  During this time, the Hoggar were grievously affected by the strife and, as the informative liners, note "the camel-drivers' songs, the flute and the fiddle are disappearing," a phenomenon that is sadly too common throughout the world.

Among the really impressive elements of this are the hypnotic hand-claps that accompany polyphonal singing and chanting in large group ensembles—the vocals can be haunting and otherwordly.  The solo work of flutes and fiddles is also very interesting to hear, along with the teherdent, a lute-like instrument with great resonance that gives what seems like a blues feel to the performances.

Recordings like this really gives a different perspective on what music means as an everyday practice for people who are not professionals in the Western sense and it seems to this listener to get to the very marrow of what music is.  Sometimes, a return to the essence is a way to recalibrate, whether it is in the written word, the visual arts, or, in this case, organized sound as music.