In January 2003, Plant joined Justin Adams -- the guitarist in his Secret Shakers band and the producer of Tinariwen's first CD, "The Radio Tisdas Sessions" (World Village) -- for the Festival in the Desert, an annual celebration of Tuareg culture.

"A lot of musicians lose their thirst for adventure, and here's a guy in his 50s who was chasing music out in the middle of the desert," says Michael Orlove, program director for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, who also attended the 2003 festival and spent time with Plant during it.

Inspired by the sound

The impact of Plant and Adams' trip is evident from the many songs on their new CD, "Mighty Rearranger" (Sanctuary), which incorporates elements of Malian music -- from the incantatory acoustic guitar chug of "Somebody Knocking" to the title track's Ali Farka Toure-indebted guitar groove.

"Takamba" takes its rhythm and its name from the rolling groove used by the Super Onse du Gao, one of the festival's performers -- "Robert and I saw this group, and we were completely bowled over," Adams remembers.

The son of a British ambassador who grew up in Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, and a veteran of the eclectic rock band Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart, Adams heard in Tinariwen a synthesis of many of his musical passions when he discovered the band on a trip to Mali.

"There was an obviously bluesy sound, but there was also a North African thing in there, a Middle Eastern thing in there," he says.

Formed in 1979, Tinariwen (a word in the Tuareg's Tamsheq language that translates into "desert in plural") draws on traditional Tuareg music -- songs about heroes and history that were originally performed on stringed fiddles, lutes and shepherd's flute -- and takes it out of the desert via electric guitar.

"This music was in our blood. It was like our mother's milk when we grew up," says band member Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni by e-mail and translated by the band's manager, Andy Morgan.

"For us the guitar was an exciting instrument. It was a link with the outside world, which we were trying so hard to understand and come to terms with."

Tinariwen is just one example of the many Malian musicians who have risen to international prominence in recent years, a trend that has revealed both the beauty and variety of the country's music.

"The richness of Mali lies in the diversity of its culture," Adams says. "It's a big country, with many different peoples and languages. All of them have their own music."

"It's one country but it might as well be many different countries," Alhousseyni explains.

Malian music encompasses the centuries-old praise songs and histories of the djelis (known elsewhere as griots) of the Mande people, and the songs of the Wassoulou culture that only began developing in the 1950s. This mix of ancient and modern extends to the instruments used in Malian music, as the kora (African harp) and ngoni (lute) vie with electric guitars and trap drum kits.

Common element

For all these differences, Adams and others hear a common element that links Mali's music to American blues. "What exists in a lot of the music is this trancelike bluesy element, that chord that kind of digs inside you," Chicago's Orlove says. "And it's also the voice [that] is like a knife cutting through. There's a piercing vocal quality that they all have."

The hypnotic, haunting songs on Tinariwen's second CD, "Amassakoul" (World Village), are built on layers of stark, grinding guitar drones and blueslike call-and-response chants that tell of the hardships of desert life in voices weathered by sun and sand. "All our music comes from the desert, and is about the desert." Alhousseyni says. "Sometimes the sadness in the music reflects the emptiness of the desert. But sometimes the joy reflects the fact that all our friends and our families are out there. It's everything to us."

-Kevin McKeough