Nothing is more evocative of the fascinating expanses of the Sahara desert than the music of Tartit, a Tuareg band consisting of five women and four men residing in the Timbuktu region (Mali). Unlike that other renowned Tuareg band, Tinariwen, Tartit play quiet, hypnotic, trance-inducing music: the women sit down, sing, and play cyclic rhythms on their tinde drums, while the men accompany them on string instruments, acoustic and electric. The men are veiled, the women aren't.
Tuareg society is one of the few throughout Africa in which women are allowed to choose (and divorce) their husbands. Tartit have toured Europe (a.o. as part of the Desert Blues shows alongside Afel Bocoum & Habib Koite). The album was recorded in the desert by Congotronics producer Vincent Kenis on his mobile studio.