ABSTRACT
This paper explores how contemporary Tuareg musical and video performance is a form of translation, to elaborate and communicate Tuareg nationalism on a global stage. The Tuareg have utilized their traditional oral history and culture as a form of resistance, translating the traditional into modern performance, to promote a modern political identity. The evolving methods of performance as translation have transformed Tuareg forms and stages of resistance, from the gun to the guitar and from the local to the global. Utilizing the Tuareg language of Tamasheq and drawing inspiration from their traditional oral archive, Tuareg performance is preserving and safeguarding their intangible cultural heritage as an ethical and political act in a war of liberation.
