“The best live album I’ve ever heard.”
--Charlie Gillett, BBC Radio

“It is one of the few honest things I have been a part of in a long, long time.” 
--Robert Plant

“the scene of one of the satisfying music festivals I’ve ever attended — and surely one of the most surreal ever staged.”  --Banning Eyre, Boston Phoenix

“the most thrilling music festival experience of my life.”--Sean Barlow, Afropop Worldwide

“…the only event on Earth where top-name Western musicians (like Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin) perform on the same stage as nomadic groups with guitars, where Muslim government leaders and devout adherents of Islam sit in the same audience as jeans-wearing men with tattoos, and where camels and donkeys are as common a sight as people.” --Jonathan Curiel, San Francisco Chronicle

“The Festival of the Desert in Mali might not have the name recognition of Newport, New Orleans, or Montreux, but on the ‘Exotic’ and ‘Remote’ scales, it has all music festivals beat.” --Sean Carberry, Here and Now—WBUR, Boston

“For the finale, Plant pulled out a mellow rendition of ‘Whole Lotta Love,’ but many of the thousands in attendance had never even heard of Led Zeppelin - except of course, the small contingent of European tourists.  Says Plant, ‘They were like, ‘What the fuck is he doing here?’’” --Austin Scaggs, Rolling Stone

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Electric Guitars, Camels, and the World’s Stage in the ...
Festival in the Desert: Quotes from the Press & Beyond

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