Etran de l’Aïr: Welcome to the wedding party, pal! (The Naked City)
Image: Supplied/Sydney Opera House
Etran de l’Aïr: Welcome to the wedding party, pal! is the latest column (February 10, 2025) from Coffin Ed‘s The Naked City column – featured exclusively on City Hub.
Contemporary African music has long captured the interest of Australian music fans. The numbers of devotees might be small when compared to mass pop audiences but the passion of its supporters is undeniable. African music styles are highly diverse and there’s many components of the very broad genre that turn people on. Whether it’s the rhythm or the grooves, the often complex melodies, the driving percussion or the sheer exuberance of its performers, it’s become a universally loved experience.
I spoke with Sydney local Annette Carter, one of the most enthusiastic supporters of African music in this country. Annette fondly remembers a remarkable number of African bands who toured Australia from the mid 80s onwards – groups and artists such as Baba Maal, Angelique Kidjo, Kanda Bongo Man, Mahlathini & the Mahotella Queens, Youssou N’Dour, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Remmy Ongala, Salif Kieta, the Bhundu Boys and many more.
For the true diehards like Sydney local Annette Carter, the annual concert in Mali, in the Sahara Desert around 65 kilometres from Timbuktu, was an essential pilgrimage. She vividly remembers visits camping in a basic Tuareg tent against a backdrop of empty sand dunes and the superb roster of African musicians.
The festival was based on a centuries-old tradition where the Tuareg tribes of the region met once a year to share music. Sadly the festival came to an end in 2012 when Tuareg rebels took control of Northern Mali, and were overrun by Islamic separatist groups.
In the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, festivals and clubs throughout the country featured home based artists such as Moussa Diakite & Wassado and Bu-Baca Diop. If you wanted to hear African music on a Saturday night and set the dance floor alight there was always a band playing somewhere.
The annual Womadelaide Festival was a huge catalyst in the promotion of African music in Australia in its formative years, not only for visiting bands but for many of the locally based musicians. Today it still continues to champion African artists- but without the really big names of a decade or more ago.
That’s not to say Africa does not continue to throw up some remarkable musical surprises and one of the latest is the Nigerien guitar band Etran de l’Aïr. The group have actually been around since the early 1990s supposedly when leader Moussa ‘Abindi’ Ibra was only 9 years old. Agadez, a relatively small city in Niger, was their home base and the band was formed with brothers and cousins from a very humble start. It was no easy beginning as Moussa remembers:
“We only had one acoustic guitar and for percussion, we hit a calabash with a sandal. It was difficult. We would walk to gigs by foot, lugging all our equipment, carrying a small PA and guitars on our backs, 25 kilometres into the bush, to play for free…there’s nowhere in Agadez we haven’t played.”
It was on the local wedding circuit, where the band would often be expected to play for hours on end, that the guys found a dedicated local following. Whilst the religious part of the marriage was kept private, the wedding party was open to anybody. The group would play for a fee but would also be showered with money from their many admirers.
Many ethnomusicologists will tell you that blues music is rooted in Africa with artists such as Ali Farka Toure often cited as a modern day link in that tradition.
Etran are very much part of that legacy with their bluesy guitar jangle melded into a broader pan African style that includes Hausa bar bands and Congolese Soukous. It’s a sound that is easily absorbed by western ears and propelled by an energy that equates to many Anglo guitar driven rock bands.
Surprisingly it’s only in the last five to ten years that Etran have received much wider recognition. A number of killer albums has guaranteed that and they are now regulars on the international festival circuit.
If you are hearing Etran de l’Aïr for the very first time, don’t expect the Senegalese sophistication and intricate musical embrace that define artists such as Youssou N’Dour.
The guitar based sound of Etran is raw and uncompromising and has changed little over the past twenty years. It locks you into a hypnotic, mesmerizing groove and you either ride with it or miss out on the party altogether.
Judging on the reaction of audiences worldwide it will be one non-stop celebration, like a wedding in Agadez, when the band play two Sydney shows at the Opera House next month.
Etran de L’Air play the Utzon Room on 6 March. Tickets can be found here.
