Americans wondering what happened to all the good protest music are looking on the wrong continent. For better or more likely for worse, Africa has cornered that market for decades.

The evolving songs of freedom that emanated out from under South Africa’s apartheid regime are the best known, but music has also stirred the social conscience of the obscure, widely scattered Touareg culture of the southern Sahara. With rolling, haunting rhythms, precise electric guitar tweaks and plaintive call-and-response, desert blues ensemble Tinariwen recalls the decades of drought, exile and repression witnessed by its nomadic people.

Considered folk heroes among their own, the band’s original members joined together in 1982 while training to fight the Malian government at a Libyan rebel camp. Their union birthed a new genre, Tishoumaren, which melds traditional Touareg sounds with the influences of John Lennon and the Bobs Marley and Dylan, and replaces traditional instruments with electric strings. Once banned in Mali and Algeria, and now often compared to the sound of the legendary Ali Farka Toure, Tinariwen’s music evokes a palpable sense of powerful determination.

The group will perform in a black box setting at Mershon Auditorium on Thursday, October 28. Call 292-3535 for details. —Melissa Starker