Amaka Jaji’s Debut Album, ‘TIDET,’ Fuses Tuareg Tradition With Modernity

Jaji grew up in Ghat, an oasis town in the south of Libya, where his people have lived for the past one thousand years. His father was a Sufi sheikh and Jaji started singing spiritual music and reciting the Qur’an at the age of ten, with a soulful voice that he took for granted.

“When I was a kid, us children would go to the sand and do gymnastics and when we got tired, my friends would ask me to sing,” he remembers. “But I didn’t take it seriously.” When Jaji started playing the guitar, the same friends told him that he should be a sheikh, not a guitarist. It wasn’t until he grew tired of his life in Ghat and moved to Tunis that he picked up the guitar again and started making music with a colleague from his hometown.

“In Libya, I wasn’t interested in my culture at all,” says Jaji. “I felt we had to move on and develop. But after living in Tunisia for one year, I realized that I miss my town, my people, my culture, our music, everything.” The move from Ghat to Tunis threw him into a whirlwind, feeling estranged in his chosen home for the first four years. When he returned to the guitar, he did it to remember his people through sound.

By the time he was stuck in lockdown, musical experiments with his producer Tika, a fellow Libyan from Tripoli, turned into the vision that became TIDET — an innovative take on the sounds of his heritage. “Tuareg music stopped developing and moving in the ‘90s. We’re stuck with the old style and our bands make very similar music,” he says.

“The whole world knows about digital sounds, synths and 808s. Why isn’t there anyone who takes rhythms from South Libya and makes them international and accessible to all of humanity?” he continues. “My vision is to take Tuareg and Sufi music and make it popular and understandable, so those who don’t know what I'm saying can still enjoy it, because music is a feeling.”

His influences span from American hip-hop to Algerian raï. I tell him that the synths and rhythms in “TENERE,” the third track on the album, remind me of Sudanese music. He smiles and sings the first lines of the track, then says: “The Sudanese sound is on my mind a lot, you’ll always find it in my music. Sudanese people helped me be creative.”

Ghat is home to a big Sudanese community; one of Jaji’s music teachers played the piano the Sudanese way, on keys that are specifically tuned to create ethereal synths and polyrhythmic notes. “Whenever he threw a party, it was a huge event with people dancing, because this sound was new to us,” remembers Jaji.

TIDET’s versatile soundscape tells the story of Jaji’s existence as a modern Tuareg man. “OUDAD,” the first track on the album, can be considered a traditional Tuareg song — the people of Ghat liked it, because this is what they know. As the album progresses, local instruments and spiritual chants are interwoven with electronic elements, trap and popular North African rhythms.

His first official release, “WEN” (Arabic for “where”), track seven on the album, explores his search for belonging. “We live in the desert, but we have phones, electricity, cars, and the internet. We’re connected with the whole world and we wear modern clothes,” he says. “This is my reality, I'm something mixed — a modern guy with tradition.”

The creation of “WEN” marked a creative breakthrough in Jaji’s journey: after “forgetting he was Sufi guy,” during his first years in Tunis, he returned to Ghat for his brother’s funeral. “I saw the rituals that I used to think were normal, listened to the melodies and thought, ‘It’s f****** good music.’”

Jaji recorded the spiritual chants performed at his brother’s funeral, sped them up and added a variety of effects, such as equalization, heavy compression, reverb. The treated version echoes through “WEN,” immortalizing this deeply personal moment, and creating a sound that is new both to the world and to his community, who, unlike “OUDAD,” did not love “WEN.”

On tracks “SHIN NE9DAR NDEER” and “ALLAMA,” Jaji pays homage to his late grandmother Allama, a legendary musician who played the rabāba, a bowed string instrument. Stumbling across an instagram video of her performing in the 1950s, he decided to sample the recording on his album, continuing her legacy and blending the past with the present.

Throughout our conversation, Jaji switches between Arabic and English, depending on how easily I can follow. “The album is about a struggle you and I have in common,” he says to my surprise. “It’s the struggle with our language. Like you, I understand my mother tongue, but it’s very hard to speak it fluently.”

On “TARANIN” (Tamahaq for “My Love”), track 10, he sings in Tamahaq, his Tuareg language. But on “WEN,” he asks, “makani wen?” (Where is my place?) in Arabic, the colonizer’s language he grew up speaking. “It bothers me that I think in Arabic,” he shares. “But I came to realize that you are who you are, regardless of the language you speak. No one can take my desert from me, because it’s my land.”

TIDET is emotion and experiment, fusing Jaji’s heritage and individual journey, his languages, musical interests and personal relationships. The album’s “Sufi and Islamic vibes,” as he calls them, stem from a deep-rooted faith he has nurtured since childhood. “I follow God’s rules even in my music,” he says. “I try as much as I can to do something good for humanity.”

As we near the end of our conversation, he laughs and says, “You know, my friends Bilal and Ratchooper are in my head right now, saying, ‘Don’t forget about us.’ They helped me a lot to get to where I am now. When you do a lot of work and the result is small, it breaks you.”

He pauses, then continues: “But my vision is very, very big, and my people are always pushing me forward. I have this privilege and I should help my community, because I use their voices, rhythms and heritage, so I feel a responsibility to go back and help the Tuareg people as much as I can.”