Tinariwen @ the Showbox – 8/9/24
Photos & Words by Mike Mitchell

Nomadic Toureg legends Tinerawin took a sold out Showbox audience on a trip to the Sahara last Friday night. The African sextet wove a tapestry of intricate guitar interplay, call and response vocals, and percussion that was at once trance-like and propulsive.

My western ears detected flourishes of Delta blues and psychedelic rock mixed in with the band’s more obvious African influences, but the show was not so much an academic exercise as an invitation to dance and communicate with no shared tongue required (beyond the universal languages of melody and rhythm).

Tinariwen’s Showbox set was, for me, the rare performance that prompts one to ponder whether we all might get along a little better if we were able to gather as one and share such a unifying and life affirming experience.