MANNY ANSAR FESTIVAL GATE FESTIVAL VENUE

Mali: The day the music stopped

“We do not want Satan’s music,” said an Islamist spokesman as he banned the broadcasting of all western music from his stronghold in , a city that finds itself within the most literal and brutal jurisdiction in the world today; the ‘red zone’ in northern . The region is also home to the world-renowned ‘Festival in the ’ whose director Manny Ansar remains confident that no one can kill Malian music. “We’re dealing with people who don’t know what they’re doing and who won’t win,” he told journalist Andy Morgan.

BY ANDY MORGAN

ON WEDNESDAY 22 AUGUST 2012, the following announcement was made by Osama Ould Abdel Kader, a spokesperson for MUJAO based in the city of Gao: “We, the mujahedeen of Gao, of and , henceforward forbid the broadcasting of any western music on all radios in this Islamic territory. This ban takes effect from today, Wednesday. We do not want Satan’s music. In its place, there will be Quranic verses. Sharia demands this. What God commands must be done.”

In Gao, a group of teenagers sits around a ghetto blaster listening to Bob Marley. A Landcruiser pick-up loaded with tooled-up Islamic police comes by and seeing the reggae fans, stops and accosts them. “This music is haram [1],” says one of the MUJAO men as he yanks the cassette out of the blaster and crushes it under his feet. “Listen to this instead,” he barks, handing the startled reggae fans a tape of Cheikh Abderrahmane Soudais, the highly revered Quranic chanter from in Saudi Arabia.

In Timbuktu, a young teenager receives a call on his mobile phone while he’s standing on a street corner in the town centre. As the tinny ringtone sends out a looping riff lifted from a song by local singer Seckou Maiga, it’s overheard by a group of Ansar ud-Dine soldiers who are standing nearby. One of them, not much older than the teenager with the phone, breaks off from the group and strides over. “Hey! Give me that here!” he orders. The youth hands over his phone slowly, his face blank and grim. Giving his shoulders an impatient shrug to better seat his AK47, the Ansar ud- Dine fighter opens the back of the phone, picks out the SIM card, and grinds it into the dust with his feet. He then gives the phone back in pieces. “None of that Godless music, understand?!!”

ALL THAT IS BANNED IS DESIRED

In Kidal, a group of women gather on the dirt airstrip to the east of the town. They sit close, at least thirty of them, in a large huddle of shimmering indigo robes. One women starts to beat the tindé drum, whilst another sprinkles water on its goatskin to keep it taut and resonant. Their chanting ululating rise up to the hazy skies and send old poetry out to the flat horizons; calling, responding, propelling, forward, me, you, us, all, together. The tindé is the mitochondrial DNA of all Touareg music. Its horizontal beat powers the communal joy of major feasts and gatherings in Touareg lands. Like so much traditional Touareg music, it is played by women and only women. The tindé is an essential ingredient in the glue that binds female society together and gives it power and confidence. But as the men gather around to watch, as they’ve been used to doing for as long as they can remember, Ansar ud-Dine militiamen with black headbands and AK47s strapped to their chests slice into the crowd and shatter it into angry fragments, shouting at the men to keep away from the women and go home. Then they order the women to stop what they’re doing and go back to their homes as well. The mood bursts, and the joy ekes away to be replaced by surliness and frustration.