3 February 2022
I’ve stood at the edge of the Sahara, sensing that here, truly is the edge of the world, and that only the void exists beyond the reach of my vision, instilling the sense of awe and magnitude I'm told people say the Grand Canyon inspires in them.
I’ve flown over the Grand Canyon too, but I didn’t experience the vastness of geographical time and being a mere drop in the ocean of existence. I simply wanted the plane to land so I could kiss the ground over and over and over and over, safe on terra firma again. Standing at the beginnings of the desert however, was a profound moment.
When I hear the guitar drone of Tuareg music I am taken back, in the way music can instantly transport you — no, not to the dunes of the Sahara, but to the hills of San Francisco.
Stepping back a bit, or stepping into the dunes if we want to push the word play, I received an email today for a new release on the Sahel Sounds label announcing an album by Abba Gargando [1]. It’s fantastic, and everything I want from a Tuareg drone artist.
I may be one of few people who use this particular taxonomy for the genre. Most frequent is desert blues, which, while evocative, is misleading, unless you are thinking etymologically. It's ‘tifinagh’ in native Berber languages (thank you Wikipedia [2]), and more popularly Tuareg Rock.
I was introduced to the Tuareg through Paul Bowles, the proto-beatnik and existentialist. Well, that’s not strictly true. At school I was reading Raymond Chandler, and with the jump to art school, Jack Kerouac… the gateway to my discovery of Bowles. The image of Chandler bashing away at a typewriter, cigarette dangled from mouth was romantic enough to make me think about wanting to be a writer, but reading Bowles made me want to be a writer: “Let it come down” [3] (specifically, the 1980 Black Sparrow Press edition, which I miraculously still possess to this day).
1990, and Bernardo Bertolucci directs “The Sheltering Sky” [4]. My mother once told me this is her favourite film. She also loves “The Comfort of Strangers” [5], adapted from Ian McEwan’s novel. If you’ve seen these both it does make you wonder a little about her hopes and dreams. The jefa always insists she’s never seen it. So we end up watching it for another time. And each viewing, when the Tuareg gentleman gazes at Deborah Winger from under his deep indigo robes, she goes all melty. This film is where I first become aware of the Tuareg. Looks like we’re about to watch it once more, the same conversation having just repeated itself again tonight.
It also features John Malkovich, a figure who, like the Tuareg has had a long story arc, connecting with my not-writing through the years. Paul Bowles said of the film: “It should never have been filmed. The ending is idiotic and the rest is pretty bad”. He wasn’t delighted with the beatniks turning up in Tangiers either.
It’s 1999*. My sound art cd-rom has been published in Japan by Digitalogue, something of a personal bucket list moment, as the other multimedia artist they have on the imprint is John Maeda. For me this is like having Elvis as a label mate. But it’s made in Japan. So I only own a single copy and no one I know, or don’t know, can buy it. So I form a multimedia record company with the bassist from the rock group Curve and publish a UK-released edition. It’s entered for Adobe’s art cd-rom of the year (I’m just going to use cd from here on in, typing hyphen rom each time is getting tedious), the winner of which will be announced at a conference in San Francisco. Historical note, back then it was Macromedia, not Adobe, and they were famous for Flash, bringing games and overly long opening animations to web sites everywhere. I programmed in Flash’s bigger but less famous brother, Director.
I wrote to a user group called Direct-L (a precursor of Reddit) asking if anyone could recommend a cheap hotel, investigating the possibility of attending the conference. A name I recognised from the list but didn’t personally know replied, saying simply ‘stay with us’.
That’s how I met Richard Ross.
Richard and Fiona invited me to stay a whole week with them, and be my guides to San Francisco. My second visit to the US, having only very recently been to LA (with NY being the trio of cities with the unique effect on our psyche; being familiar before we have even arrive). I had a bucket list. Ride the hills in a car chase; visit City Lights bookshop [6]; party like it's 1999 in Haight-Ashbury.
Circles are closing. City Lights published "A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard" by Paul Bowles [7], whose writing I wanted to emulate, and the dramatisation of one of his novels introduced me to the Tuareg culture.
Richard was an amazing host, more so when you consider we thought we could have, perhaps, maybe, met once at a programming event, but we knew mutual people in the computer sound art world. Having both been punks who learnt to program, it felt like we were old friends immediately.
More astounding perhaps was the sociability of his S.O., Fiona, who didn't know me from Larry but willingly bore the task of showing me around SF while Richard attended his day job. Somewhere in a cocktail bar on a floor high in a tall building (tall buildings still be a talking point back then in earthquake prone SF), I had my first real martini. Details are sketchy. Obvious really, since I now know, but wasn't aware then, that a martini is essentially a tumbler full of neat vodka. But in a fancier glass. With a green olive. Some notes on style: a martini is judged by its limpidity, so the fictional James Bond with his "shaken not stirred' is really showing his brash, uncouth thuggishness by clouding his martini the fuck up, shattering ice crystals into it, rather than the gentle stirring required. Also note that if your preferred poison is gin, then it's a pickled onion, not an olive. And it's not a gin martini. It's a Gibson.
The Gimlet [8] incidentally, is also basically neat gin, tempered with lime juice. Raymond Chandler, who we met earlier, has his fictional Philip Marlowe in "The Long Goodbye" [9] declare that "a real gimlet is half gin and half Rose's lime juice cordial, and nothing else."
I was taken to the Tonga Room & Hurricane Bar — my first tiki bar. One of the most memorable and enjoyable experiences of my life. It has a lake inside. With a band who come out and play on it. In a boat. Where it rains. Indoors. With the recorded sound of a tropical storm and thunder. I could say it twice, but just read those lines again. Honestly, nothing can prepare you for how this exceeds every movie-led fantasy you may have had about living-the-life. This was like being in your own Steven Soderbergh film.
Richard and I not only bonded over punk ethics, digital art, and coding, but our music tastes were more penumbra than venn: 80s heroin drone merchants Spacemen3, the hypnotic grooves of Neu!, the fractured glitch melodies of Autechre.
One evening Richard played the droning guitars of Tuareg rock. I was transfixed.
It was an incredible week. My two hosts showed me SF. I rode the hills in cabs meeting amazing programmers whose help I leant on creating my cd. I drank martinis while watching seals at pier 39. I bought a copy of "A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard" by Paul Bowles from City Lights Books itself [7]. I went through San Jose, I knew the way, visiting Thomas Dolby's company based in San Mateo, whose Beatnik technology was embedded in my sound art (I think of Paul Bowles sighing, ‘them again’). I won the Adobe fine art cd of the year. To celebrate, I partied like it was 1999 in a tiki bar with amazing people from the programming world.
I heard Tuareg drone music for the first time.
Richard died of a brain tumour in 2014. People say nice things when people die. Sometimes they can even be true. Warm, generous, passionate, empathic, enthusiastic, open, helpful, funny. Even knowing his life sentence, he wrote emails naming the tumour Barry.
Abba Gargando's album is a delight of lo-fi fuzzy drones, wholly recommended. The Saharan scene is fascinating, sharing its DIY ethos with doo-wop artists cutting tracks in floppy vinyl recording booths, the photocopier and staples of punk, and the recording and distribution of music through mobile phones of desert blues.
While we only met in person a handful of times, Richard remains in my heart, and every time I hear the wow and flutter of tifinagh I think of Richard, and of San Francisco.
Richard Ross 196X — 2014
Which brings me to why this post exists. I have long harboured a desire to be a writer. The problem with that is, you have to write, and you have to have something to write about. So here I am, a few years since reading 'Let it come down', and still not a writer. You have to start somewhere. So I'm starting here. Since I don't have anything particular to say, I'll quietly fanboy over the modern means of expressing our personalities — the objects we buy and consume.
* There is a Tuareg language remake of Prince's film (you didn't think I was to let that 1999 reference go so easily did you?) "Purple Rain" entitled "Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai" [10]. Famous for their robes dyed deep indigo, the title translates as 'Rain the Colour of Blue With a Little Red in It' since there is no word in the Berber languages for purple. Before you chuckle, remember that we all said giolureade, or 'yellow-red' for orange until 1500. The etymology of indigo, however, the Tuareg's dye of choice, can be traced back to between 600 to 500 BCE [11].
** Spiritualized, who were once Spaceman3, have an album called “Let it come down”. Everything is connected.
References
1.
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_blues
3. https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/569/56987/let-it-come-down/9780141182209.html
4. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100594/
5. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/111394/the-comfort-of-strangers-by-ian-mcewan/9780099754916
7. https://citylights.com/city-lights-published/hundred-camels-in-the-courtyard/
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimlet_(cocktail)
9. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/26047/the-long-goodbye-by-raymond-chandler/9780394757681
10.
11. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1882-0918-2757
Further listening
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Lovely stuff.
Another thing: I'm not knowledgeable in music, but the music you mentioned in this post reminded me a bit of Kashtin. Do you know them? Different continent, but I always enjoyed them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfccVzCw4Uc