Les Filles de Illighadad are a

Tuareg The Tuareg people (; also spelled Twareg or Touareg; endonym: ''Imuhaɣ/Imušaɣ/Imašeɣăn/Imajeɣăn'') are a large Berber ethnic group that principally inhabit the Sahara in a vast area stretching from far southwestern Libya to southern Alg ...

band founded by Fatou Seidi Ghali in Illighadad, a village in the

Sahara Desert , photo = Sahara real color.jpg , photo_caption = The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972 , map = , map_image = , location = , country = , country1 = , ...

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagestende Tende (; Italian, Occitan and Royasc: ''Tenda'') is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France. Geography Tende is located within Mercantour National Park in the French Alps. The mountainous commune is bordered b ...

'', centered on a drum made with

mortar and pestle Mortar and pestle is a set of two simple tools used from the Stone Age to the present day to prepare ingredients or substances by crushing and grinding them into a fine paste or powder in the kitchen, laboratory, and pharmacy. The ''mortar'' ( ...

s, a style that influenced Tuareg guitar playing but isn't generally part of the music played by Tuareg men. Les Filles de Illighadad incorporate tende with guitar playing, "asserting the power of women to innovate using the roots of traditional Tuareg music". Ghali usually plays with her cousin, Alamnou Akrouni. Ghali and the Filles have recorded three albums with Christopher Kirkley, for his

Sahel Sounds Sahel Sounds is an American record label, based in Portland, Oregon which specializes in music from the southern part of the Sahara desert. Details Sahel Sounds was founded by Christopher Kirkley, a self-proclaimed "amateur ethnomusicologist", wh ...

label. Recordings were made in the open air, and consisted of recordings of Ghali in the daytime, and the Filles playing in the village at night. Following the release of the first album, the Filles did a short European tour, and Ghali used her earnings to buy more cattle. Mariama Salah Aswan left the group to begin a family; she was replaced by the second Tuareg woman guitarist, Fatimata Ahmadelher. The group toured in the US in the fall of 2019, playing in New York and Detroit, as a four-piece band consisting of Ghali, Akirwini, Ahmadelher, and Gahli's brother, Abdoulaye Madassane, on rhythm guitar. The album '' At Pioneer Works'' was recorded at the

Pioneer Works Pioneer Works is a non-profit cultural center in Red Hook, New York City. The center builds community through the arts and sciences to create an open and inspired world. It encourages radical thinking across disciplines by providing practitioners ...

arts center in

Red Hook, Brooklyn Red Hook is a neighborhood in northwestern Brooklyn, New York City, New York, within the area once known as South Brooklyn. It is located on a peninsula projecting into the Upper New York Bay and is bounded by the Gowanus Expressway and the Car ...

in October 2019 during this tour. The band's music was described by

Amanda Petrusich Amanda Petrusich (born c. 1980) is an American music journalist. She is a staff writer at ''The New Yorker'' and the author of three books: ''Pink Moon'' (2007), '' It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American M ...

as "heavy, meditative, and tender", and reminiscent of "players like R. L. Burnside or

Otha Turner Othar "Otha" Turner (June 2, 1907 – February 27, 2003) was one of the last well-known fife players in the vanishing American fife and drum blues tradition. His music was also part of the African-American genre known as Hill country blues. E ...

, who were directly informed by African music seeded in the American South by enslaved Africans". Writing for

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

, David Renard stated that the group's sound "takes the Tuareg guitar music sometimes referred to as desert blues, brought to the West by breakthrough artists from the region like Mdou Moctar, Bombino and Tinariwen, and fuses it with tendé... The result is repetitive and hypnotic, and conveys something spiritual and solemn... but also transmits a sense of joy and playfulness that goes back to the music's roots in village life."

Members

*Fatou Seidi Ghali - guitar,

tende Tende (; Italian, Occitan and Royasc: ''Tenda'') is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France. Geography Tende is located within Mercantour National Park in the French Alps. The mountainous commune is bordered b ...

*Alamnou Akrouni - vocals,

calabash Calabash (; ''Lagenaria siceraria''), also known as bottle gourd, white-flowered gourd, long melon, birdhouse gourd, New Guinea bean, Tasmania bean, and opo squash, is a vine grown for its fruit. It can be either harvested young to be consumed ...

*Fatimata Ahmadelher - guitar *Abdoulay Madassane - bass *Ahmoudou Madassane - vocals, guitar

Former members

*Mariama Salah Aswan - vocals

Discography

*''Les Filles de Illighadad'' (Sahel Sounds, 2016) *''Eghass Malan'' (Sahel Sounds, 2017) *'' At Pioneer Works'' (Sahel Sounds, 2021)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Filles de Illighadad, Les Nigerien musical groups Nigerien desert blues musicians