Tinariwen

There is a wistful yet joyous depth of feeling in Tinariwen’s music that is both universal and personal—an experience defined by struggle, exile and hope, expressed through the band’s unique blend of West African traditional music and electrified rock’n’roll. 

Tinariwen are Tuaregs, children of a nomadic Berber tribe who have roamed the Saharan desert for thousands of years. Displaced by colonialism and the partitioning of ancestral territory, the band are in search of a homeland lost to them—a reality expressed musically through their fusion of desert blues with a spirit of honesty and resistance.  

Following their 1970s origins in northern Mali, the band rose to prominence with The Radio Tisdas Sessions in the early 2000s before winning a Grammy Award for their fifth album, ‘Tassili’. Collaborations alongside the likes of Kurt Vile, Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), and Jack White have cemented Tinariwen’s status as a cult band and a living symbol of Tuareg poetry and resistance. 

Returning to Hobart for the first time since a near-sell out show at the Odeon in 2024, Tinariwen are celebrating their tenth studio album in the spirit of their beginnings—a rawer sound and greater presence of female voices in a collaborative output that reflects the strength of their community.