Tinariwen as Comfort Music

Our own Ms. Fevers has several times expounded upon the concept of comfort music and why she keeps some of it in the rotation at all times.  You know, tunes you know so well that you can play along on the air drums or guitar if you like,  or catch that pause in the big vocal line just right.

Here's a little story about a different kind of comfort music.

It's yesterday afternoon and I'm  in the back of a truck on a hot parking lot following a long day selling plants at the farmer's market.  My phone rings and it's my mom, so even though I have two coworkers shoving flats of perennials in at me, I feel I have to jump down and see what's up.

"Your Uncle Charles died last night," she tells me.  "I know you can't get time off to come down with me to the funeral, but I wanted to make sure you knew."  I told her how sorry I was, that I loved her and would call in the morning to talk about it, then we finished our load out and I head back to Wisconsin in the big white truck that gets only one radio station.

You don't need to know a big family saga to get this story, but the following is important.  My mother and Charles, her only sibling, were estranged for some years.  When she finally got back in touch with that side of the family and arranged a visit, I was her chauffeur on the road trip down to St. Louis.  So I was  there to witness the reunion in which he really did not know who she was, due to the onset of Alzheimer's disease.  She was a trooper, kept reminding him all weekend that she was his only little sister as  they played piano and sang song like "Home on the Range"  together. Semiannual visits have followed as he's moved into the later stages of the disease.

Back to Wisconsin and safely cocooned in my own car for the ride back home, I see I did not have my iPod along. Glance down, see Tinariwen's Imidiwan is onboard and go for that as I mull over memories of my uncle, other relatives my family has lost to Alzheimer's and just how damn painful that is.  My mom has seen her father, her brother and a number of her in-laws just plain forget who she is.

Driving down the highway.  Family. Tinariwen.  Memories. Tinariwen. Sad times.  Tinariwen. The blues in the desert blues.  Ibrahim's Ag Alhabib's rough voice holds as much pain as it does resistance and strength.  By the time they got to "Assuf ag Assuf" my throat has tightened up and a few big fat tears are trickling down my cheeks.

"Assuf is one of those big Tamashek words with a deep and complex meaning.  It can mean loneliness, homesickness, anxiety, worry, emotional or spiritual pain, longing, nostaligia.  It also means everything out in the darkness beyond the warmth and companionship of the campfire." - from Andy Morgan's notes on the lyric translation.

We all knew their music could rock and groove like anything.  Liner note readers probably also know that Ibrahim's lyrics are a long trail of brave resistance, broken dreams and broken hearts.  What I'd never realized was how gently that same music could hold my hurting heart this day.