African rhythms, textures that reach out to the West

The Festival in the Desert -- described as the “most remote music festival on the planet” -- has taken place since 2001 near Timbuktu in the African Sahara. A celebration of the culture of the nomadic Touregs of northern Mali, and an extension of traditional annual gatherings, it also has welcomed performers from other parts of Mali, Africa and the world.

Sunday afternoon at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, the group Tinariwen, Malian diva Ramatou Diakite and blues artist Markus James afforded an opportunity to experience some aspects of the festival without the trip into the depths of the Sahara.

Opening the program as a replacement for the originally scheduled French band Lo’Jo, American guitarist-singer-songwriter James -- who has been recording and performing his original blues-based, Mali-tinged numbers for a decade -- appeared with a pair of traditional Malian musicians. Accompanied by the African kora and calabash drum, James’ rich baritone voice blended amiably with the seemingly unlikely sounds, enlivened by his rhythmic strumming and bottleneck slides.

James’ compositions largely abandoned familiar blues chords in favor of a hypnotic suspension of moving harmonies and an emphasis on lyrical expressiveness -- particularly effective in numbers such as “Weathervane” and “Do You Do?”

Diakite’s performance revealed the extent to which the Wassoulou area of Mali has combined traditional sounds and rhythms with Western instruments and textures. Accompanied by a group that included electric guitars as well as a kora and a djembe drum, she sang, and occasionally danced, with a sensual enthusiasm fully justifying her position as a youthful successor to Mali’s much honored Oumou Sangare.

Tinariwen (originally Taghreft Tinariwen, meaning “Edification of the Lands”) has been in existence -- with various personnel -- for two decades. The first ensemble to employ contemporary pop music to express the concerns of a youthful Toureg generation, the group has quickly gathered a strong critical following in the West, as well.

The six-member version of Tinariwen that performed in Cerritos was a compelling musical entity. Garbed in traditional desert wear and singing either in unison or in call-and-response fashion, interspersing vocals with dynamic guitar and percussion, they drew listeners into an extraordinary musical world, in which the exotic, the foreign and the familiar all managed to find common cause.

What was missing from the programs of Diakite and Tinariwen, however, was some sort of explanatory material or translations. As powerful as the music was, its impact would surely have been enhanced by an awareness of the complex messages and the rich poetry of the lyrics.