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Just deserts for `extreme' festival
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Toronto Star, Just deserts for `extreme' festival >>
Annual Mali gathering being held next month
Originally created as way to quell civil war
JOHN GODDARD
STAFF REPORTER
Rain is one threat nobody has to think about at the Festival in the Desert.
Billed as the world's most extreme music event, it is held every January in the open Sahara north of Timbuktu, in a region where men go veiled and women do not. The entertainment includes camel racing and sand hockey. During the day, jam sessions unfold inside large tents provided by nomadic Tuareg tribes.
And on a cement platform, powered by gas generators, night performances are staged by Tuareg bands, along with established stars from host country of Mali and an expanding list of overseas acts.
In 2003, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin fame performed a bluesy set of North African-tinged sounds and mingled easily with the crowd. At the fifth edition, coming up Jan. 7 to 9, Canadians are scheduled to play for the first time — traditional Quebecois group Les Charbonniers de L'Enfer (The Coal Miners From Hell) and Quebec gypsy-style band Manouche.
Expanding the audience vicariously is a slew of films and CDs from previous festivals, now hitting European and North American markets. Interest in next month's edition ranks at an all-time high. "Four documentary television crews have asked to come — two French, one Austrian and one from England," says festival director Manny Ansar.
"The president himself (mali's Amadou Toumani Touré) might also come," Ansar said in an interview at the recent industry World Music Expo in Essen, Germany. "People can have a good opportunity to speak to him."
Dialogue is a key element for organizers. The festival sprang from a desire to end a protracted desert war.
The event's beginnings can be traced to frequent research trips to Mali in the 1990s by the French troubadour ensemble Lo'Jo. The group forged a friendship with Tinariwen, a Tuareg guitar band whose members came together at refugee camps in Algeria and Libya.
The band members told of often vicious fighting between the Tuareg Berber peoples of the northern desert and Malian government troops, representing the more settled black peoples of the south.
Lo'Jo's humanitarian concerns led to meetings between Philippe Brix — the ensemble's manager — and Issa Dicko of Efes, a Tuareg association dedicated to the political, social and cultural development of Mali's desert regions.
Countless cups of bitter, syrupy tea later, the two decided to bring modern staging to a traditional gathering of Tuareg clans from Mali and neighbouring Niger. The next such event was to take place in a remote northeastern region, near the Malian village oasis of Tidal.
It became the first official Festival In The Desert, with camel races and live electric music, held for three days in 2001 beginning on the first full moon of the new millennium. The aim was to reinforce a newly achieved ceasefire by giving the Tuareg peoples an international profile.
By all accounts, the occasion proved a grand adventure. On the way, armed desert bandits hijacked the main equipment truck, until Tinariwen guitarist and war hero Kheddou Ag Ossad talked them into giving it back. Mali's prime minister attended along with four ambassadors including Canada's Yves Boulanger, arriving in an armed convoy of 25 Toyota Land Cruisers.
"No sooner had the moon reached its fullness above the horizon, its perfect rotundity was invaded by a dark shadow," British music journalist Andy Morgan wrote of the first night. "We were in for a total eclipse of the moon."
Afterward, organizers decided to make the festival an annual event, relocating it in 2002 to a less remote spot — a five-hour drive north of Timbuktu over a desert track at Essakane. The festival returned there in early 2003 and 2004.
Attendance has averaged about 1,000 Tuaregs, about the same number of camels, and up to 60 Western tourists. Everyone sleeps in communal tents. Toilets and showers are straw-mat structures with open roofs. Most meals consist of rice or couscous, with a small piece of meat.
Festival veterans speak of 2003 as a "golden year," partly because of the thrilling presence of Plant, a longtime desert blues fan.
The 2004 edition proved a low point. The chief tourism organizer, Hamou, and his driver were killed in a car crash leaving the festival. A second vehicle carrying tourists overturned elsewhere the same night. Both were racing over the desert through darkness after the closing concert to make a flight some distance away in Mopti.
"For 2005, I've asked the tourism company (Paris-based Point Afrique) to delay the return flight time," festival organizer Ansar says. "Before leaving the festival site, people can get some sleep."
Festival-related recordings began appearing almost from the start. The first was The Radio Tisdas Sessions (World Village), a CD recorded not long after the inaugural event by perennial headliners Tinariwen. This fall, the band released a second album, Amassakoul (World Village) and completed an ambitious U.S. tour.
A live CD from the 2003 edition, Festival In The Desert (World Village/Harmonia Mundi), was recently followed by a DVD of the same title, now in stores, featuring Robert Plant and Malian stars Ali Farka Touré and Oumou Sangaré.
Two television documentaries have also aired recently. BBC ran one last month on the 2004 edition. And a week ago, the U.S. satellite channel Link TV aired Festival In The Desert: The Tent Sessions, an intimate and joyful film of the daytime jams at the 2003 festival. It is a co-production of Link TV and Afropop Worldwide of New York.
Ansar says he is delighted that CDs and DVDs from the festival have proved so popular, riding the world music Top 10 lists in Europe for months at a time. Royalties from the spinoffs, he said, will be crucial to meet the 2005 festival budget.
The festival's loftier goals are also being achieved. The ceasefire is holding. Political diplomacy is being pursued. Guest artists from southern Mali are mixing with northern counterparts and forging friendships.
"It's my first time in the desert," guitarist Lobi Traoré, from the Malian capital of Bamako, says in The Tent Sessions film. "It's a new world to me."
Festival appearances are also strengthening individual careers.
Lobi Traoré released a new international CD this fall, Mali Blue. Plant has recorded a CD for release next spring using festival material. Lo'Jo recently released a double live CD, Ce Soir Là (World Village), from a French tour.
Adama Yalomba Traoré, who appeared at the 2003 edition, recently issued a debut album Yalomba (Mali K-7). He also performed to delegates at October's World Music Expo in Essen, Germany, wowing them at the encore with a back flip.
Suddenly Timbuktu, long a metaphor for the outlandishly remote, seems not so far away.
12/11/04 >> go there
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