Nidhal Yahyaoui was born in the little town of Bargou, in a highland region of Tunisia near the border with Algeria that has its own distinctive songs in the Targ dialect, a blend of Berber and Arabic. Concerned that the local music was dying out, he spent more than a decade collecting songs from the region, and then, with help from producer and keyboard player Sofyann Ben Youssef, he assembled the Bargou 08 band to record in his parents’ home. Yahyaoui sings and plays the loutar lute, backed by local reed instruments, the gasba and zokra, along with a rhythm section of drums and percussion, with basslines played on a Moog synthesiser by Youssef. The result is a gutsy, entertaining album of North African folk-rock that ranges from the drifting Le Min Ijina to the stomping dance song Wazzaa, driven on by flute and a loping bass line.
