Minnesota’s weighing heavy--sort of--at the Gothamist this week. Among this week’s picks is the TC’s own Andrew Bird--who made one of the best albums of the year, according to the NYC site, and is playing the Bowery Ballroom with Keren Ann Wednesday night. And Mali’s Tinariwen--playing a Walker-sponsored show at the Cedar in April--is touted as being “a real salmagundi of influences: the music of Bob Marley and Bob Dylan, Led Zepplin and John Lennon, the sounds of Morocco and London and America reverberate in their songs.” Of the Toureg band, which formed in the refugee camps of northeast Mali, Tofuhut writes:
Beyonce and Lil’ Wayne talk about being soldiers, but Tinariwen have lived it; many of the members of the group fought in Touareg rebellions. The legend has it that one of the performers survived multiple bullet wounds in a firefight during which he carried a guitar on his back. Tinariwen are, perhaps understandably, treated as royalty in their home country; they are liberators of a sound that might not otherwise ever have been heard.