The sands of time

The hippest band on the world music stage at the moment is Tinariwen. From the vastness of Mali, comes a music dubbed ‘desert blues’ all at once haunting, lyrical and remote. The band are Tuareg nomads, mountain people, who for decades were fighting for their rights as a persecuted minority in the face of oppression from the Mali government. Tinariwen was founded among the rootless and dispossessed Tuareg youth who roamed across north Africa in search of work. Trained in Colonel Gaddaffi’s army, many took up arms against the Mali government. Their time in battle was brief, but it has become the bedrock of the Tinariwen legend. Without doubt, the iconic imagery of the band is compelling; black desert robes, criss-crossed with bandaleros, Kalashnikov in one hand, Fender Strat in the other. The members of Tinariwen are musicians and poets, not soldiers or politicians, yet they speak to anger and a frustration and so their music is deeply rooted in the politics of the outsider.

Forty years ago as the tanks of the Soviet Union rolled into Prague, another band, the Plastic People of the Universe came to symbolise the underground resistance of youth to the Communist juggernaut desperate to squash all dissent. At one level they were just another psychedelic band and would have passed unnoticed in the West. But playing rock in the Communist bloc set the band hard against the police and they faced bans and arrest at every turn. But they never gave up and played cat and mouse with the Czech government for years. The history of the band during the seventies was every bit as entwined in the history of Czech resistance as Tinariwen is with Mali

Compared to the stories of Tinariwen and the Plastics – the political promise of western rock ‘n roll appears to have been totally compromised by its reliance on a multi-national music business for its very existence. I have just finished the authorised biography of Jack Bruce, who came to fame as the bass guitarist and vocalist with Cream. Jack’s Scottish family were staunchly working class, card-carrying members of the Communist Party – and the songs Jack wrote with Pete Brown spoke to the view that the bosses and the politicians conspired against working people every step of the way. Back in the day, Jack told a journalist that he didn’t feel the likes of the Beatles and the Stones had any real political consciousness, ‘they just got upset about things’. It seems hilarious to me looking back that the authorities in Britain and the USA could have believed John Lennon was a serious threat to the status quo. The sight of the Stones quaking as Altamont got out of hand spoke volumes. Maybe Bob Dylan most cogently expressed the hopes of a generation seeking genuine political change. But you’d be struggling after that. Although much maligned now, from the sixties evolved the notion of civil rights, tolerance towards gay people and concern for the environment But what part did musicians play in all that? Later on - was Live Aid just a very good chance to revive some flagging sixties careers? Is the thought of Sting and Bono linked to the plight of the rain forest and third world debt ridiculous? Or am I just a hopeless cynic? What do you think?