Festival in the Desert [IMPORT] [LIVE]

Various Artists (Artist)

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 14, 2003)
• Original Release Date: October 14, 2003
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import, Live
• Label: World Village USA
• ASIN: B0000CBLAM
• In-Print Editions: DVD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,365 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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  #26 in	Music > Imports > International
  #40 in	Music > World Music > Africa

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
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. But Led Zeppelin-heads who buy the CD just for him--particularly those drawn to the Middle-Eastern strains of Plant's music from "Kashmir" through his recent collaborations with Jimmy Page--are in for quite a pleasant surprise when they hear the rest of the disc. What comes across the most, despite the star power present, is the energy of the live performances in such an extraordinary setting, making the Navajo rock band Blackfire, the gorgeous duet between Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi and the Malian kora player Ballake Sissoko, the otherworldly collaboration between French rappers Kwal and the Touareg (desert nomad) guitarist and singer Foy-Foy, and the French sisters Lo'Jo's duet with Malian guitarist Django all sound like natural pairings, unfolding together under the Saharan sky. --Ezra Gale

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing!, August 25, 2005

By	rai (Osaka, Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Festival in the Desert (DVD)

I was very excited when I saw this DVD in the store, and I bought it. I really wanted to see Oumou Sangare and Tinariwen perform live, but in both cases, just as the song starts, THEY CUT AWAY FOR AN INTERVIEW! Somehow they manage to include complete performances from the people I didn't care about (Robert Plant, the awful French group, the Navajo heavy-metal band...) while short-changing the actual local bands. The Navajo band is intriguingly weird: the lead singer gives a heart-felt speech about his people losing their culture and language, then the band launches into a heavy-metal song sung in ENGLISH. That was kinda (sadly) amusing...

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sounds and styles are all over the board!, August 29, 2004

By	WorldDiscoveries.Net "Bill Donovan, Reviewer" (Petaluma, California) - See all my reviews

Billed as the 'Woodstock of the Sahara' and other names, FESTIVAL IN THE DESERT's various artists are unified by one thing: participation in a 2003 desert ethnic music fest sixty kilometers northwest of Timbuktu in Mali.
 Its organization - a non-government association of international world councils and unions - includes such diverse groups as Tinariwen, Robert Plant, Ali Farka Toure, Omou Sangare, and more: so don't expect a uniformity of sound or theme in FESTIVAL IN THE DESERT 2003's production: sounds and styles are all over the board.
 This is the place to hear new groups; from the renowned band LoJo to the UK answer to Ry Cooder in Justin Adams.
 The live recording is clean and clear enough that little is lost in fidelity due to audience participation: so if it's twenty diverse cuts of African music from across the continent that's needed as an introduction to some of the best artists of modern times, don't miss FESTIVAL IN THE DESERT 2003 - or future yearly productions to come.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Trance grooves, proto blues, and more...., January 2, 2004

By	rudiger (Hoople, ND) - See all my reviews

It seems like an unlikely concept: "Let's have a music festival in one of the most remote, inhospitable places on earth!" But that's exactly what happened in the Sahara Desert back in January 2003, drawing together a few dozen musicians from host-country Mali, neighboring Mauritania, and even a few from France, the US, and the UK. Had Robert Plant not been among the latter contingent, the event would likely have attracted little attention outside rarified "world music" circles. But there he was, nestled amid the dunes and jamming with the locals, and fortunately somebody was able to get a CD made of all this.

"FESTIVAL" features just one track apiece from Plant and 19 other artists who took part in this 3-day patch of improbability, though they each performed whole sets. (Several other groups who also took part according to the notes don't appear on the CD at all.) So it's a highly varied collection, but somehow the different hues all blend together. Plant's featured contribution, "Win My Train Fare Home," is a bluesy number quite in keeping with the tone of the festival. Malian pop stars like Oumou Sangare, Ali Farka Toure and Adama Yalomba are interspersed with lesser known locals, many of them Toureg desert-dwellers, as well as a handful of non-African groups.

It's been said that the blues can be traced back to Mali, and musicians like Ali Farka have capitalized on this legend by inflecting their songs with sounds inspired by American blues greats (John Lee Hooker in particular). Maybe that case has been overstated somewhat--if he sounds like John Lee, it's probably due more to his collection of American blues records than to a primeval connection that survived the Middle Passage. Nevertheless, from the music on this disc it's obvious that rock and blues have plenty in common with West African music. It may not float every Led Zep fan's boat, but it's a fine collection of songs from a very unlikely place.