Sounds from the Sahara

The Tuareg tribes of Mali have gathered to make music for generations. For the past nine years international bands and fans have joined them. Peter DiCampo takes his camera along to the Festival Au Desert and asks: is it for the tourists or for the purists? While the annual Festival Au Desert has made a popular tourist destination out of Essakane, a small desert village several hours outside Timbuktu in northern Mali, the roots of the celebration reach deep into local history. For generations, the Tuareg tribes that roam the southern edge of the Sahara have gathered at the close of each nomadic season, meeting to exchange information, resolve conflict, celebrate the births and weddings of the previous year, and to create music.

Foreign performers were first invited to join the festivities in January 2001, when a French band and three bands from across Mali accompanied the Tuareg musicians for an intimate desert concert. Since then, the festival has become an international phenomenon, as up to 40 bands perform in front of crowds of thousands. "A few years ago there was war here, and now there is music," says Manna Ansar, the festival's founder and organiser, referring to Tuareg separatist uprisings that eventually led to a civil war from 1994 to 1996. "The festival helps the nomads and the non-nomadic people to get to know each other. It allows local artists to be exposed to other influences, and there's an opportunity for their music to be exported."

At this year's festival, the tourists seem to have taken over, leaving the Malians to either perform or cater. Local Tuaregs erect traditional tents for the crowds to sleep in, haggle over the price of a camel ride through the desert, or wander about hawking everything from sweet hot tea to handcrafted jewellery to phone cards. Vendors and guides from Timbuktu flock to the area, relying on the event, held over three days earlier this month, for much of their income.

Asked if he looks forward to the festival, Abdullai Ag Almidi, a camel guide in his early twenties from Timbuktu, answers, "Of course. I look forward to it because before, during, and afterwards I can find tourists." But when the music commences on the concert's first evening, it is clear that this is a festival for Malians, and that, despite their numbers, the foreign travellers are still mere guests. The Malians, Tuareg and otherwise, react to the music with an unbridled enthusiasm. They swarm around the local band Kabalala, who stand in the sand far from the stage, singing and tapping on calabashes, their fingers laced with large rings. Later, the Malians are at the front and centre of the stage, swaying, cheering, and clapping as timeless chants blend with electric pop from across West Africa.

By the time the Malian pop star Salif Keita appears, the crowd has reached a frenzy. He energetically leaps across the stage, while below Malians scramble for a better view, men shouting along with every lyric and women screaming and ululating at the close of every song. Away from the scheduled events, a musical camaraderie continues. Impromptu performances dot the festival grounds, in tents and around campfires. Even the festival's brightest stars mingle with locals. Crowds gathered around the tent of the singer Haira Arby, of Timbuktu, as she sang along with a mix of musicians, warming-up for the stage. Although tourists are invited to join in with their own instruments, the final twangs of guitar chords lasts almost until dawn, long after most foreigners have gone to sleep.

For Ansar, attracting performers and music lovers from across the country to Tuareg lands is one of the concert's greatest successes. "Of course, there's always the danger of tainting it," he adds. But that seems unlikely, and it is something that organisers are determined to avoid. For starters, Ansar refuses to move the concert to Timbuktu, a move that would cut out the expensive, hours-long and potentially hazardous trek through the desert via a 4x4. Between worldwide financial woes and travel advisories in the region, only 800 tourists attended in 2009, the first time in the festival's history with fewer people than the previous year. Still, Ansar is resistant to making the festival more accessible to tourists.

"There's always a question of whether to go closer to Timbuktu to get more tourists or staying in the desert to get more Tuaregs," he says. "But the choice is a quick one."