Tartit - Tamasheq Women's Voices From Mali

In the organizer's words:

This group from Timbuktu was founded in 1995 in exile between the refugee camps in Mauritania and Burkina Faso. All members come from the Timbuktu region, especially the Goundam Cercle. The group has a single aim: to sing about exile, love, peace and the political situation of the Tuareg. Tartit was founded to preserve traditional Tuareg music, which was slowly disappearing. It consists of female voices through an organization called Tartitn'Chetma (Union of Sisters). Tartit's concerts are an invitation to a journey into the desert. Inviting and almost hypnotic, this music inevitably leads into the mystical world of the Kel Tamasheq (people who speak Tamasheq, the language of the Tuareg). The magic of the performance is enhanced by the beauty of the traditional dress and authentic instruments: the tende (a mortar drum covered with goat or sheep skin), the tahardent (a three-stringed plucked inland spit lute), the kel and the imzad (a one-stringed bowed lute made from a calabash, with a string of horsehair). The songs are a mixture of traditional and modern melodies.