The Manager's Blog (pt. 11)

I just spent a reinvigorating few days with Ibrahim in Paris. He was there a week before the rest of the band to do his UK visa. In itself, that was brutal experience, which I'll try and paint in dark vivid colours on a future blog, once the bastards have given us the visa. Ibrahim needs it to appear on the main stage at Glastonbury next Saturday. We don't have it yet...the usual UK border cliff hanger. Once the ordeal was over, Ibrahim and I could more or less chill in an apartment lent to us by the wonderful Aghali, a Touareg friend from Aguelhoc near Kidal, and his wife Helène. We had a few interviews to do, with the Times, the Big Issue and the Mirror (all out in the next few weeks I hope) and we had a few other people to meet, but it was a gentle schedule in comparison to most. It gave me lots of opportunities to chat with Ibrahim about the band, the future, the situation in the desert and...creationism. Creationism???!!! Yes, creationism, but more about that later.

Ibrahim was in a really good mood. It seems that all the stresses and strains of recording the new album 'Imidiwan', which had driven him to escape the demands of showbiz back in February and flee into the desert instead of coming on the Australian and US tour as planned, have abated. He's back to his quiet generous considerate ways...albeit with that characteristic intensity constantly fizzing like electricity about his person. Without the fatigue and pressure of touring or recording, and surrounded by a bunch of people whom he trusts and feels comfortable with, he opened up as he has rarely done before. We had a fine flowing evening in the company of Nadia Belalimat, the Touareg poetry expert who's done the translations of the lyrics on the new album, Jessy Nottola, who's made the brilliant film that accompanies the new CD and Jean-Paul Romann, who produced 'Imidiwan'.

We were also joined by Aboubacrine Ag Rhissa, an old friend of Ibrahim and the band's, who has recently returned from Kidal to live closer to his kids in Paris. Abou runs Akassa Sahel, an NGO that has set up plenty of nomad schools in the Kidal area. He's also a brilliant funny guy to have around and a good French-Tamashek translator, which comes in handy during interviews when Ibrahim's adequate French fails one of his particularly complex trains of thought. Abou was in good form that night, showing us pictures of the shooting of a new film called 'Le Dernier Vol du Lancaster', directed by Karim Dridi and starring the magnifique Marion Cotillard (who played Edith Piaf in the recent Oscar-winning biopic). The film is about the aviator Bill Lancaster, who crashed a plane in the middle of the Sahara during the first world war and found himself ensared in a full-blown Touareg rebellion. Abou plays the role of the Touareg rebel hero Firhoun...and doesn't he look shiny and dashing in his old-skool indigo robes and turn-of-the-century cheche??!! The directors of the film have obviously taken care to recreate the Sahara of the early 1900s faithfully and I'm looking forward to seeing the film.

Anyway, our conversation roamed freely over all kinds of gritty subjects. At times the mood was hilarious, and it struck me once again, as it does so often when I'm in the middle of a good blarney with a bunch of Touareg, that humour is the one element that is so often overlooked by outsiders when they attempt to delineate the essence of the desert nomads in words or pictures. Towards the end of the evening, Ibrahim launched our convivial caravan in a new direction. "What I'd like to know," he suddenly declared, "is who created all the animals?" Both Jean-Paul and I launched into light playful explanations of Darwinism. But Ibrahim was totally unconvinced. "I know," he said, as if anything beyond his conviction was just kid's stuff, "that all men, all of us, all of you, are descended from Adam and Hawa (the Tamashek name for Eve)." He went on to describe the process, in a way that was both easy to digest and very entertaining to watch, and he did the same for the story of Moses, the flood and the ark. I should have realised that we share almost all of our most important creation myths with the Touareg, and with all the "people of the book", including Jews and Muslims. But for Ibrahim, there's no dilution of belief, no flip-flopping with these essential stories, which underpin his sense of self like granite. I've never heard him talk about religious or spiritual topics before. He normally keeps them far away from any mundane agenda. But this was an exceptional night of discourse, and many exceptional unforseen words were spoken. i felt privileged to be there. Then again, if I think about it dispassionately, I almost always feel privileged to pass quality time with Tinairwen. It's my payback for the drudgery of management, and the visa-guillotine that hovers constantly over the head of anyone managing a band from outside our safe European home.

Bristol - 21st June 2009.