While interviewing Dirty Projectors for a profile in 2009—on the cusp of the release of Bitte Orca and their Malian guitar-meets-Mariah hit “Stillness Is the Move”—band leader Dave Longstreth enthused over a Saharan guitarist on the Sublime Frequencies label who went by the name Bombino. In the last six years, the Tuareg artist has continued to make inroads in the West, touring and recording Stateside, and his 2013 album Nomad found him in the studio with the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach. And now, Longstreth’s early admiration has come full circle, as he was tapped to record Bombino’s latest, Azel, in upstate New York. The resulting record presents the guitarist in a lucid, unadorned light.
There’s no need to add too much to Bombino’s desert blues—his unassuming and astonishing playing speaks volumes on its own. Seeing him live, his left hand is deceptively fast, flicking off the strings and lighting upon extra notes that other players can’t quite hit. Much like fellow Tichumaren players Tinariwen, Bombino’s acumen blends techniques derived from ngoni (a traditional lute), the imzad (a one-stringed bow instrument), and the amplified guitar of Hendrix and Santana.
Azel isn’t so different from his unofficial first album for Sublime Frequencies, 2009’s Guitars From Agadez Vol. 2, which was recorded in his home country of Niger and intimate enough to capture the sounds of camels on one side and ragged stomping on the other. His gentleness comes through on “Igmayagh Dum (My Lover),” built from handclaps, thumped guitar body, and a nimble melody, with Bombino’s lines of love—sung in Tamasheq—delivered in a gentle purr. Meanwhile, his electric guitar prickles and the drums careen on “Timidiwa (Friendship).” There is one new wrinkle, though: a kind of fusion with reggae. That might sound corny on paper, but Bombino and his group keep it all low-key, and the sounds soon assimilate. Album centerpiece “Iyat Ninhay / Jaguar (A Great Desert I Saw)” is driven by a lilting bassline that leads into an incandescent solo from Bombino as trilling zaghrouta voices punctuate the ecstasy of the moment.
But for all the guitar pyrotechnics, Western production, and reggae infusions, Azel never sounds like anything other than a sublime iteration of desert blues. Bombino has not pivoted towards Western music, as he still sings about the issues of his homeland in his native tongue. Hushed closer “Naqqim Dagh Timshar (We Are Left in This Abandoned Place)” tells of the plight of his people with a lines that translate to: “We sit in an abandoned place/ Everyone has left us/ The world has evolved/ And we’ve been abandoned.” Even with Bombino increasingly gaining exposure in America, lyrics like those remind us that his music continually speaks for those that would otherwise be unheard back home.
