Various Artists

Festival in the Desert (DVD)

World Village

         The stark beauty of the Sahara, 40 miles from Timbuktu, is somehow only enhanced when trampled score after score of camel, mounted by men in indigo veils and blue jeans, their backs weighted by Fender and Gibson.  To the nomadic Tuareg people of Mali, the traditional festival times are occasions of great importance for settling disputes, trading news and sharing culture.  Brutal oppression of Tuareg rebels in the 1980s and `90s by the Malian government, and the droughts of the past decade, put an end to many of these gatherings.  But the surging interest in Mali’s music – centered on the likes of Ali Farka Touré and Tinariwen – has created a new opportunity to revamp the old traditions.  Thus, Festival in the Desert: a cultural meet-up disguised as a music festival, already an integral part of the Tuareg balance between maintaining the old ways and winning the mad dash to modernization.

         This new DVD documentary of 2003’sfestival features performances by the main players in the Malian cultural revolution (Tinariwen, Touré Django, Tartit) as well as European and American well-wishers (Robert Plant, Blackfire and Festival co-organizers Lo’Jo.)  The performances are all interesting and – in cases such as Tinariwen’s dazzling stage-full of musicians performing “Amassakoul `n’ Tenere” – sometimes brilliant.  But more important, perhaps, are filmmaker Lionel Brouet’s attention to his interview subjects, such as the insightful Tartit vocalist Disco and festival producer Issa Dicko, as well as to the landscape of the festival site and its population. 

         Unfortunately, the performances that gets the most screen-time is Robert Plant’s Tinariwen-inspired desert-blues snake-take on “If I Ever Get Lucky.”  And while augmented by the Lo’Jo drummers, and fascinating context (the Robert Johnson and John Lee Hooker licks really do seem more African than American), it’s still ever-familiar stuff to anyone ever before within earshot of classic-rock radio.  Plant completists (good god, are there such creatures?) will love it.  The rest of us will tire after a few of his seven minutes.

         More interesting by far is the immediate and vehement audience response to Blackfire, an Arizona-based Navajo punk band.  Even in English, Blackfire’s “Common Enemy,” with stock chugging guitars and shouted vocals, strikes some kind of chord with the audience.  Plant’s blues-laced Africanisms may be ethnomusicology closer to the Tuareg sound, but obviously the physical catharsis and raised fist of a similarly oppressed people is more immediately recognizable.