Expect the unexpected in new indie production Snout presented by Edmonton’s Catch The Keys theatre
You don’t get too many opportunities in a lifetime to strike up a conversation with someone like Bono.
Kiran Ahluwalia had a golden opportunity last summer when she played a festival in Mali, but she felt there was no point in trying.
Invited by her Tuareg friends in the band Tinariwen to help headline the Festival au Desert in the midst of intense political turmoil, Ahluwalia found herself backstage practically rubbing shoulders with the famous rock star/philanthropist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Yet it wasn’t to be. “I didn’t have a need to talk to him,” the Juno-winning, Indian-born artist said in a recent interview. “He was there and I was a few feet away from him, but I didn’t feel the urge to invade his space. It would have been a meaningless meeting.”
There is no regret or remorse in Ahluwalia’s voice.
“‘Oh, hi Bono, I’m Kiran. I’m going to be singing with Tinariwen tomorrow.’ And he would have said, ‘Oh, that’s really nice. Cool.’ ”
She laughed, and admitted that if the tables had been turned and Bono had approached her, she would have obviously been happy to chat. “I would talk to anybody.”
The trip that brought her to perform at the Festival au Desert — an event that has now been documented on a new live album — was not an easy one.
With the African country in the midst of a civil war, Ahluwalia explained how she dared to make the trek based on guarantees offered by the festival’s director, while most of her friends had decided not to go.
“It was like biblical times or the time of the Prophet Muhammad.” KIRAN AHLUWALIA ON CONDITIONS IN TIMBUKTU, MALI
Ahluwalia also felt her close ties with Tinariwen pull her toward the Sahara.
Splitting her time between New York City and Markham, Ont., for the better part of the past decade, Ahluwalia’s latest reinvention of the Indian and Pakistani forms of ghazal poetry that have been the core of her work featured the Tuareg blues outfit performing as her backing band on Juno-winning album Aam Zameen: Common Ground.
“They came to New York a couple of times and I sang with them here in Brooklyn and also in Toronto,” she said.
“I was in touch with them pretty often. The festival director got a hold of the CD on a trip to Europe and then invited me.
“Political instability started to erupt (in Mali). People were getting kidnapped, and people who refused to get kidnapped were getting killed on the spot. ... So things were not looking good, and many people in the industry who had gone to the festival for eight years were not going, and my band didn’t want to go.
“I was going to be alone, and Tinariwen was going to be my band.”
The festival director begged and begged, guaranteeing a good hotel and a secure ride from the airport.
Upon landing in Mali after a flight from Belgium, the driver who was supposed to get her to her hotel was nowhere to be found. Ahluwalia had to hop in a cab to get to her hotel on her own.
“I didn’t have any local currency because you can’t get any local currency anywhere in the world. There’s no bank at the airport, there’s just people. You don’t know if you’re getting duped or what.”
The next day she flew to Timbuktu with a few other musicians — “massive confusion, but all fun” — and that’s where the true reality of Mali set in.
“It was like biblical times or the time of the Prophet Muhammad,” she said. “The buildings looked like they hadn’t changed in 4,000 years.”
Ahluwalia was meant to perform at midnight on the third day of the festival (Bono was a surprise guest on the second), and she ended up playing her set with Tinariwen well past 3 a.m., a performance that included a haunting rendition of her Tinariwen-backed Mustt Mustt.
“It was freezing cold,” she said.
“So that’s what you can hear (on Festival au Desert): Me freezing away and singing.”