Mon Feb 12, 2007 11:45 AM GMT

By Nick Tattersall

DAKAR (Reuters Life!) - Even in West Africa's musical melting pot Dakar, a bunch of turbaned desert nomads brandishing electric guitars cuts quite a dash.

Fresh in from their hometown Kidal, a remote Saharan outpost beyond Mali's fabled city of Timbuktu, award-winning band Tinariwen are en route for a tour of Europe, swapping desert tents for the concert halls of Paris and London.

Formed by Saharan outlaws in a revolutionary guerrilla camp set up by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in the 1980s, Tinariwen have gone from warrior-poets, fighting for greater freedom for their Malian tribesmen, to world-renowned musicians.

Legend has it one of their founding members, Keddou Ag Ossad, was shot 17 times fighting in a rebellion launched by Tuareg nomads in the early 1990s. Although the band long since swapped their Kalashnikovs for guitars, the spirit lives on.

"We will never lose our roots. Without the roots, the music is nothing, it cannot succeed," said guitarist, lyricist and singer Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni, relaxing in a Dakar nightclub as his fellow band members prepared to take to the stage.

Mixing traditional Tuareg poetry with hypnotic riffs played on electric guitars, Tinariwen became heroes of the "Ishumar", a generation of unemployed desert youths bent on revolt who adopted their music as protest anthems.

Fiercely proud of their centuries-old independence, the turban-clad Tuaregs staged rebellions in Mali and Niger more than a decade ago to demand more autonomy from black African governments in capitals more than 1,000 km (600 miles) away.  

Peace deals were later signed, but resentment is still high in a region economically marginalised and awash with arms. Tinariwen remains the soundtrack of revolt, with teenage bands from Agadez to Timbuktu trying to imitate their sound.

CAMELS, GIRLS AND STARS

Often suspicious of the outside world, the Tuaregs may have worked the vast Saharan caravan routes for generations but relatively few venture far beyond their ancestral lands.

The members of Tinariwen have seen the world during concert tours since they were discovered by the western music industry a few years ago.

But they say that for all the glamour of Europe and the United States, nothing beats the empty dunes and sun-blasted boulders of their homeland.

"When you play in the desert there is inspiration that comes into your head, there is space ... You cannot live without the ambiance of the desert, the camels, the girls, the stars," said bassist Eyadou Ag Leche, 28.

Already missing Kidal, Ag Leche said he most felt at ease in places that reminded him of home.

"The countries I like are the desert of America, Arizona, and Australia where there is really a lot of space," he said.

Their latest album "Aman Iman", being launched around the world this month and next, talks of the musicians' love of the desert and calls for still fractious nomadic clans to unite, a more reconciliatory tone than their early music.

But with the song "Soixante Trois" they also recall the first Tuareg rebellion of 1963, in which some of the band members' relatives were slain.

Their latest European tour, which begins in Munich on March 1, will include more than 54 concerts in two and half months.

Already at their warm-up gig in Dakar, the band have found fans in seemingly unlikely places.

"Often people limit African music to m'balax, to hip-hop, to high-life, but these are very African, acoustic songs," said Ndongo D., one of the baggy-jeaned members of Daara J, Senegal's most popular hip-hop group.

"Senegal needs more music like this," he told Reuters, after being invited on stage by Ag Alhousseyni to rap over one of Tinariwen's songs.