Dazzling blue, the women of Les Filles De Illighadad took the stage at Durham’s Motorco Music Hall in glorious indigo ‘aleshu’ vestments. Adorned with interspersed golden tassels and elaborate silver beading, the women’s magnetic radiance pulled the first row of the crowd a few inches closer before any of them touched an instrument. Travelling over 5,000 miles from the Illighadad region of Niger, the women’s presence was like an oasis of cool brought to Durham straight from the Sahel Desert.
Fatou Seidi Ghali, lead guitar and vocalist of Les Filles de Illighadad, took the stage with her bandmates, Alamnou Akrouni, Amaria Hamadalher, and Abdoulaye Madassane. Ghali is thought to be the first Tuareg female guitarist, teaching herself to play on the guitar her brother brought home when she was only 10 years old. Over a decade after learning, Ghali connected with Christopher Kirkley, founder of the record label Sahel Sounds, through a chance online connection and met soon after to record Les Filles de Illighadad’s first album.
Les Filles de Illighadad’s sound is unique for fusing together two different camps of Tuareg music: Tuareg guitar, primarily played by men, and Tende, the name of both the drum and style of music that is played communally by Tuareg women. As the guitar grew in popularity among Tuareg men since the 1980s and 90s, groups like Tinariwen and Mdou Moctar have gained Western commercial success in the guitar-dominant genre sometimes called “desert blues.” Tuareg women, though experts at percussive Tende music, were largely left out of this evolving musical tradition.
Daring to play despite resistance from family members and the social taboo against guitar-playing women, Ghali emerged equipped with skill in both guitar and Tende. She recruited Alamnou Akrouni for Les Filles de Illighadad and the two created a spellbinding new sound that fused Tuareg guitar and women’s Tende. The group grew to include Amaria Hamadalher and Ghali’s brother, Abdoulaye Madassane. In March 2022, Les Filles de Illighadad set out on their first U.S. tour since the pandemic, making their first stop at Durham’s Motorco Music Hall.
The group began with the first track off their 2021 release At Pioneer Works, a live album recorded at its namesake in Brooklyn in 2019. As eye-catching as the women’s gleaming garments, the askalabo—a submerged, hollowed-out calabash played with what looked like a bass drum mallet—created an unceasing throughline of calming percussion that subtly but powerfully led the crowd as we clapped along. It was easy to quickly drift into a state of warm tranquility while listening to Ghali’s entrancingly plucked guitar riffs and watching the specks of water flitter off the askalabo, disappearing into the blue stage light. I was quickly brought back into my body when Amaria Hamadalher traded places with Ghali and sang lead vocals on an unreleased track that electrified the audience. Alamnou Akrouni’s unwavering amiable energy shone through as she led the routine call and response bits the group sang. The band followed the beat of the askalabo into more of their most famous songs like “Tihiele” and “Imgradan.”
Though the songs were performed in Tamasheq and the band only addressed the crowd in French with a periodic “merci beaucoup,” an undeniable connection through the music was marked by our tireless dancing, and the women’s dissolving hesitance to approach the edge of the stage and touch hands with those of us in the front. Shortly after the end of the show, the band appeared among those of us still in the thinning crowd like an indigo vision. They accepted thanks from my friend and I, our communication limited by the language barrier. Watching Les Filles de Illighadad perform felt like a satiating bite to temporarily ease my emergent spiritual hunger, and for that I’m grateful.
