VA - Festival in the Desert (2003) [REPOST]

Throwing an enormous Woodstock-style music festival in the middle of the Sahara desert--the gorgeous photos included in the booklet to Festival in the Desert make clear--isn't exactly easy. Held during the last three years in the shifting sands of northern Mali, the Festival in the Desert has brought together a mix of desert nomads and pop stars to play sublimely enchanting music in some of the harshest but most starkly beautiful conditions imaginable. Luckily for us, the 2003 Festival produced this impressive and varied CD, mixing together tracks from Malian superstars like Oumou Sangare and Ali Farka Toure with lesser knowns like the Mauritanian singer Aicha Bint Chinghaly and the desert nomads Tinariwen, who a few years ago traded their rifles in for electric guitars when the civil war in northern Mali abated. The biggest name here, of course, is Robert Plant, who turns in a wailing medley of old blues tunes...