Koudede - Taghlamt (2012)

Taghlamt is a posthumous album by Tuareg guitarist and songwriter Koudede, who died in a car crash in 2012 Wikipedia. Released on the French label Taxila, it cemented his status as one of the central figures of the so-called Agadez guitar scene, positioned between the founding generation of the ishumar genre — Tinariwen and Abdallah Oumbadougou — and the newer wave represented by Group Inerane and Bombino Bandcamp.
Koudede Maman was born in Agadez, Niger, and grew up in the dust of the uranium mines of Arlit, between the foothills of the Aïr Massif and the sands of the Sahara SublimeFrequencies. Like many of his peers, in his youth he joined the uprising and left Niger to take up arms in the rebel camps of Algeria and Libya, where he discovered the galvanizing force of the Tuareg music scene SublimeFrequencies. According to Sublime Frequencies, he built his first guitar from a tin can and later came to be regarded as an heir to the legacy of Ali Farka Touré in West African guitar music SublimeFrequencies.
Musically, Taghlamt continues the electrified desert-blues lineage: hypnotic rhythmic pulse, pentatonic modal lead guitar, call-and-response choruses, and vocals delivered in Tamasheq. Koudede's songs are rooted in the poignance of Tuareg lore — speaking of migration, warrior virtues, distant camps and difficult loves — while also reverberating with the modern chaos of warfare and the contemporary Tuareg crisis SublimeFrequencies. Featuring twelve tracks including the title piece "Taghlamt," "Dounia," "Iferouan," and "Yala," the record stands as Koudede's most substantial full-length statement and a kind of testament from one of the Sahel scene's strongest songwriters — an essential reference point for artists such as Bombino, Group Inerane, and Mdou Moctar, all of whom, alongside Abdallah Oumbadougou, looked to him as a formative influence.

Tracklist:
1-1 Koudede - Dounia [4:19]
1-2 Koudede - Taghlamt [4:22]
1-3 Koudede - Golf [3:49]
1-4 Koudede - Kelourhou [2:24]
1-5 Koudede - Iferouan [3:53]
1-6 Koudede - Talesda [2:38]
1-7 Koudede - Tacekene Tahra [3:26]
1-8 Koudede - Archadan Iman [3:10]
1-9 Koudede - Tagha Fleur Hagkam [2:32]
1-10 Koudede - Toukan [3:00]
1-11 Koudede - Yala [3:24]
1-12 Koudede - Alam'i [4:16]