Summary: Featuring spiritually uplifting melodies, beguiling guitar patterns and insinuating rhythms, Tinariwen's desert blues is at once bang up to date and timeless. Forged in the heat of the Southern Sahara, this nomadic people's songs reflect the daily lives of the Touaregs, a landless tribe scattered across the Sahara and into Libya by political change and conflict during the 1980s. Tinariwen formed ten years later, creating a new music based on their own traditions and incorporating western and Arabic sounds heard in their wanderings. They co-founded the now annual and internationally prestigious Festival in the Desert, scored a worldwide success with their second album, Amassakoul, and since winning the African section of the BBC 3 World Music Awards 2005, have continued to charm audiences with their music's trance-like beauty.
