A Half-Arsed Look At The Music Of Tunisia

I was in Tunisia last week.

I was sat on the balcony of our hotel room on the sixth floor, watching the swallows swoop and pink tourists, strapped to the back of speedboats with parachutes, floating. I felt wonderfully isolated.



[Right-click and "Download Document" for mp3 of Leaf House by Animal Collective]

Apart from a couple of thumping French party tracks with accompanying dance moves (one of them I can only describe ineloquently as "doing a spaz shuffle") and panpipe versions of mega-selling ballads, I didn't really hear any music. A trawl of the in-built radio in our room revealed a uniformity of sound, though of course this is down to my uneducated ears regarding Mezwed music.

The most interesting thing I did hear was at a zoo. As part of an "Authentic African Experience" there was a Tunisian folk-band, consisting of a bendir, a tabla-like hand-drum that was kicking out some mad rhythms and a mizwad, this bagpipe that appeared to be made out of a boar's head, with two horns protruding out of the nostrils. A quick look around Sousse's medina for the instrument was sadly fruitless.