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REVOLUTION: TESHUMARA AND TANEKRA 247larger part of the Kidal battalion put in place over the previous year. By luck,the Ménaka battalion was spared, but it was sparsely armed. The movementnow had to choose between starting preparations all over again and attacking.On 27 June 1990 the Ménaka battalion successfully attacked several posts of thearmy and the administration in the Ménaka area. The second rebellion hadbegun.EpilogueHot on the heels of the Tinariwen Tunng caravanserai around the UK in March, thefull 7 piece Tinariwen band will head off to Australia for four dates, includingSydney Opera House and Byron Bay Blues Festival. After that it’s a hop across thePacific to play at San Francisco Jazz Festival and Coachella, the premium Americanrock fest. 110While Teshumara is no longer a very popular concept in Northern Mali, itsworldwide renown has only grown after the rebellion of the 1990s ended.Idealised as the original ‘African blues’ or ‘desert blues’, the music of theTeshumara now forms an inspiration to a number of bands and performers fromthe Northern Atlantic in search of new sounds, such as Arctic Monkeys, SoulWilliams, or Tunng. In the late 1990s the Tamasheq community had to be reconciledwith itself after years of internal bloodshed (infra). The musicians ofthe Teshumara played in smaller groups or individually at parties that werestaged in the houses of the influential members of the Tamasheq community inBamako, Kidal, Tessalit or Tamanrasset. As a band, Tinariwen played at thevarious tribal gatherings called takoubilt in Tamasheq, that were organised inthe major cities in the North, under the aegis and with the financial support ofvarious embassies, notably the US, Canada, the Netherlands, and France. There,disputes were solved, arms were handed over in an effort to promote safety forthe nomad community, and festive races and matches were organised in aneffort of reconciliation. In 1997 the members of Tinariwen met with the Frenchband Lo’Jo in Bamako, who were impressed with their sound and who invitedthem to the Festival Toucouleur in France in 1999. The takoubilt of 1999 inTahabanat remained a local affair but in 2000 the takoubilt was organised in Tin-Essakoat the edge of the Adagh under the name Festival au Désert. Thefestival attracted a small number of tourists and journalists and featured Lo’Joas the first foreign act. With their help, Tinariwen recorded its first CD, theRadio Tisdas Sessions (2001), named after the local radio station in Kidal. Itwas only then that Tinariwen started to include percussion and bass in theirpreviously strictly guitar and vocals-based music. The 2001 issue of the Festival110‘19/12/2008 – Downunder and across the pond in 2009!’ http://www.tinariwen.com