The irresistible charm of Etran de L’Aïr pulls you to your feet and into Agadez
You want to move like them, swaying onstage, bouncing in place to bass or skipping from foot to foot in the guitar solos of instrument-swapping Moussa “Abindi” Ibra, Abdourahamane “Allamine” Ibrahim and Abdoulaye “Illa” Ibrahim, flail our arms like the quick-hit patter of Albhabid Ghabdouan’s drums.
When we hear Etran de L’Aïr we yearn to dance like we’re at one of the weddings they play in their home of Agadez in Niger, the epicentre of Saharan rock. But we are in the Melbourne Recital Centre, held in our seats by the respectability of a pleasant March evening at the theatre, and it takes some persuading to tug us out.
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Etran de L’Aïr have bewitched the world from the very first lo-fi live-recorded album, No. 1, in 2018. They have created something that feels both familiar to our ear – the essence of decades of desert rock and blues – and uniquely theirs, drawn from the confluence of Pan-African music and 25 years of performance. Ultimately, an audience is powerless to resist the live allure of Etran de L’Aïr. We must dance.
The opening act, Melbourne-based, West African-derived The Mandé Spirit, weave a more gentle charm in their homage to the late, legendary kora player, Toumani Diabaté. Drawing influence from their cultural sources in Mali, Gambia and Guinea, the four-piece creates bright, mellifluous music of entwined voices, acoustic guitar, calabash, kamele ngoni and, of course, the kora. To an unfamiliar ear, the 21-string kora bears traits somewhere between the dulcet plunks of a harp and the bright twang of a sitar, played with the intricate complexity of classical guitar.
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It’s enchanting. There’s joy, life and rhythm in the The Mandé Spirit, but when they try to lead us in an audience singalong our voices are soft and unsure. Perhaps we consider these formal theatres somewhat sacred cultural spaces, and we are too nervous to sing and dance when we feel we should sit and listen in hallowed halls.
But our last restraint slowly disappears with the allure of Etran de L’Aïr. It’s a vocal but comparatively gentle start to the set with Ighre Massina, the swaying opening track of their new album, 100% Sahara Guitar. It doesn’t take long before you feel in your bones why their performance has been described as hypnotic. There’s something in the thumping rhythm of basslines and drum, the delicacy of melodic guitar solos winding about each other, at times so high and intense they’re almost flute-like, building with each successive repetition, measure by measure to manipulate our impulse to move. It’s likely that few people in the audience can speak Tamasheq, the Tuareg language of their songs, and yet their harmonious chant calls to us.
This hypnosis is not a trance state that keeps you transfixed in your seat. Their joy is infectious and their musical charisma is irresistible. We try to stand (or sit) on ceremony here in the Elisabeth Murdoch Hall and they draw us out into the light. Four Pied Pipers of Fender electric guitars and a rock drumkit.
Then when Imouha hits, all bets are off. First small clusters of the audience break off into the aisles to dance, swaying and waving their arms. Then others stand where they are in the rows and start to clap and move. Then more. Not everyone, but enough. When we stand it’s like we’re not inside, like it’s not night. The song soars with us, away and up into the sun, into the throng of a wedding dance. Imouha is drawn out longer than the album track, circling faster, dizzying, invigorating and it feels like it could go on forever.
From that point Etran de L’Aïr really start playing to the crowd, smiling because they know they’ve won us over. Experienced live, you realise why they play this way. There’s a similar purpose in all the tracks, a thread that runs between the frenzied numbers and the more subdued songs like Amidinine, or the tropical-rock twangs of Toubouk Ine Chihoussay: it’s music precision engineered for carrying the ebbs and flows of hours of dancing in an Agadez celebration. Their sound is so unbearably, splendidly bright, like the flashes of the light show on stage, like we’re standing in a distant sun-scorched desert where they have taken us all together.
A finale, raucous applause and a standing ovation that we hold into the encore where we dance one last time in the brilliance of Agadez.
It’s sunny here, with Etran de L’Aïr.
