Tell Me Why: Amina and "Dis-Moi Pourquoi"

Today's song is by French-Tunisian singer-songwriter Amina Annabi, who is best known for finishing second in the 1991 Eurovision Song Contest. Her family was involved in setting up the Tunisian Tabarka Music Festival, and so at an early age Annabi was introduced to music through concerts by Joan Baez, James Brown and Algerian singer Warda. She also became friends with Senegalese star Wasis Diop. She formed her own group, but in 1982 she went solo, as well as developing a relationship with producer Martin Meissonnier of the French radio station Radio Nova. She won a music contest in 1983 with an Arabic-influenced rap song called Shehérazade, and began performing in Paris. She eventually married Messonier and had a daughter. She has recorded five solo albums and has released a number of singles, and she has also acted in 15 movies. You can find this song, Dis-Moi Pourquoi, on her 2001 album Nomad, on her 2002 album Le Best of, and on the Putumayo various artists compilation North African Groove (2005).

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

Finding Patience: Bombino and "Zigzan"

Our random tune today is performed by Bombino, a singer-songwriter and acclaimed guitarist from Niger. He sings in the Tuareg Tamashek language and addresses political concerns of the Tuareg in his songs. Bombino taught himself to play guitar as a child in a refugee encampment in Algeria after his family had to flee Niger due to a Tuareg rebellion in 1990. While spending his teen years in exile in Algeria and Libya, he watched videos of Jimi Hendrix, Mark Knopfler and other guitarists to learn their styles. In 1997 he returned to Niger and began his life as professional musician, but had to flee again in 2007 after another Tuareg rebellion erupted. The government banned guitars to the Tuareg, fearing them as a political weapon but Bombino declared that his guitar was not a gun, but a hammer with which to build a house of the Tuareg people. While Bombino was in exile in Burkina Faso, filmmaker Ron Wyman heard cassettes of his playing and found him, and produced Bombino's chart-topping world album Agadez. Bombino returned to Niger again in 2010, and he is the subject of the film Agadez, the Music and the Rebellion. This song, Zigzan, is from Bombino's 2013 album Nomad. The song is about finding patience in a difficult world.

Listen to songs like this and more on the KUNM Global Music Show every Monday night from 10 pm - 1 am Mountain Standard Time. Live streaming, program information and the two-week digital archive can be found at http://www.kunm.org.

He's the Bomb: Bombino and "Zigzan"

Not long, maybe a year, after I first heard the Tuareg group Tinariwen and was blown away by their song Tenhert, I heard Bombino. He showed up at Albuquerque's Globalquerque World Music Festival and played both evenings of the festival, one on the main stage and the other on a smaller, more intimate stage. He was fantastic - especially on the smaller stage where he kept people dancing for his entire set. The only thing I knew, previous to my exposure to him and to Tinariwen, was that the name Tuareg was used as the name for a car line. After Tinariwen and Bombino, I thought I knew the birthplace of electric blues. It wasn't Chicago, it was the deserts of Africa. Tinariwen would dispute that - they claim that they never heard the blues before they toured the United States - but given how musical styles have traveled from Africa to other places on the globe, and especially African musical contributions to the musical legacy of the United States, who really knows. All I know is that I like what I hear.

Bombino is a singer-songwriter and acclaimed guitarist from Niger. He sings in the Tuareg Timashek language and addresses political concerns of the Tuareg in his songs. Bombino taught himself to play guitar as a child in a refugee encampment in Algeria after his family had to flee Niger due to a Tuareg rebellion in 1990. While spending his teen years in exile in Algeria and Libya, he watched videos of Jimi Hendrix, Mark Knopfler and other guitarists to learn their styles. In 1997 he returned to Niger and began his life as professional musician, but had to flee again in 2007 after another Tuareg rebellion erupted. The government banned guitars to the Tuareg, fearing them as a political weapon but Bombino declared that his guitar was not a gun, but a hammer with which to build a house of the Tuareg people. While Bombino was in exile in Burkina Faso, filmmaker Ron Wyman heard cassettes of his playing and found him, and produced Bombino's chart-topping world album Agadez. Bombino returned to Niger again in 2010, and he is the subject of the film Agadez, the Music and the Rebellion. This song, Zigzan, is from Bombino's 2013 album Nomad.

The Nomadic Life: Gypsy Caravan and "Gypsy Rain"

At the ripe old age of 50, I sometimes look back at the things I wish I had done.  I wish I had raised a child, for instance.  I wish I had done a semester abroad in college.  And sometimes I think about, in a wistful manner, a nomadic lifestyle.

I can imagine my younger self, sort of footloose, wandering through the United States like a modern Jack Kerouac, or Europe, or Asia or South America, hell maybe even Africa.  Or settling into a berth on a freighter and going from port of call to port of call.  I could see that young me stopping in interesting cities and working for a while, maybe living hand to mouth or on the edge, making just enough money to live and scrape together a small savings and then hit the road.  I could see that young me meeting interesting people, having interesting conversations, and maybe even having a torrid romance with a foreign girl or three until it fell apart and then I moved on to the next city or the next port, the next group of people or the next romance.

Of course, that never happened.  I was pretty conventional.  I went to college, graduated without any idea of what I wanted to do, joined a volunteer program but stayed in the United States (albeit I volunteered in the inner-city so I bucked convention there a little).  I then got a job, got married, got more education, and suddenly here I am, a middle aged, homeowning bureaucrat.  Becoming a nomad would radically destroy what I've built up, end my relationship with my wife and probably with most of my friends.  I can't do that, and yet...well, that's why we dream - we dream of those alternative realities, those other lives that we could have lived and didn't.  Those lives we romanticize even though they probably would have been as hard and full of pain as they would have been transformative.  Dreaming of a gypsy-like life is not the same as being an actual gypsy - and all one would have to do is ask a Sinti or Roma to learn that.

Which is why I must appreciate the siren-call that songs like Gypsy Rain by Gypsy Caravan while also resisting its charms.  When I listen to the song, I almost want to run away with the gypsies, lured by that percussion beat and that mournful, calling violin.  I want to join the campfires where the musicians sit around playing this music in the midst of the caravan while the women and men dance and I catch the eye of a young woman who seems to dance just for me, and I get up and join her and we dance far into the night together.  But that is that other, imaginary life, nothing more than a dream by one who took risks, but maybe not enough?

Gypsy Caravan is an American band formed in 1991 by Bruce Beaton and Jeff Rees in Portland, Oregon.  The band varies from four to 9 musicians, and sometimes fills in extra strings and percussion as needed. Their main focus is playing for the Gypsy Caravan Dance Company, and they play a variety of original music and tribal fusion for the company's productions. They also can be found playing in large musical productions and in smaller, more intimate venues. They have played WOMAD in Seattle in 2001 as well as hundreds of other festivals and gatherings. Gypsy Rain is from their 2008 album Migration.