Faris
Mississippi to Sahara (CD)

WRASS329

On this album, Faris brings 10 rural delta blues songs back home to Africa, revisiting them in the guitar style known as assouf and showing how close the souls of these two worlds are to each other.
Faris Amine, who was living in Italy with his father, as his mother died when he was eleven years old. She was a Touareg born into the Kel Isaqqamaren, an influential clan in what is now southern Algeria. Faris' grandparents and granduncles played an active role in the war of Independence and many members of the family were eliminated by the French. Faris' father, an Italian who was working in development projects at the time, met his mother in Algiers. The death of his mother cut him off one from half of his identity. From then on, deep inside, he knew that something was missing.
Faris had taught himself the guitar, piano and other instruments and was playing in a number of different informal groups. Music was a rock when other aspects of his life seemed precarious and troubling. At around the age of eighteen he left home and roamed around Europe for a while. He had his money stolen and was forced to busk for his food. He slept in hostels, at the homes of kind 'Samaritans', or out on the streets.
Over the course of a few trips, Faris played many festivals and small concerts and gatherings in Algeria and Mali. Faris began to realise that he hadn't yet answered that fundamental question: who am I? "Even out there, something inside was missing," he says. He then realised he had to do an album of old blues songs, but in an assouf style?

Track listing:

1. Oulhawen Win Tidit (Death Letter)
2. Alwaq Semman (Hard Times Killing Floor Blues)
3. Assouf Id Nekmam (Trouble So Hard)
4. Imiskay Idjoleman (Motherless Children)
5. Aghregh Yallah (Jesus Is On the Mainline)
6. Inezdjam (Grinnin’ in Your Face)
7. Oulh Essayaq (Feel Like Going Home)
8. Alkhoriya (Since I’ve Laid My Burden Down)
9. War Toyed (No More, My Lord)
10. Ma Ihan Iman Nagadem (The Soul of a Man)

Published: 2015

Genre: Africa & Percussion & Didgeridoo
Label: Wrasse Records