In the American imagination, the city of Timbuktu, Mali, has long been synonymous with the remoteness and forbidding mysteries of the Sahara Desert, but what’s more interesting is that Malians in southern cities like Bamako view things precisely the same way.  The cities no-man land status is partly fallout from the civil war instigated by the northern regions nomadic Taureg people, but even without that history, the surrounding area wouldn’t be the first place one would think of staging a music festival – to say nothing of finding Robert Plant amid the invited Malians.
               And yet, Plant is one of the stars of Festival in the Desert, the rousing new compilation that documents the 2003 edition of the annual January event in the neighboring Essakane, an even more remote Malian locale. “Win My Train Fare Home” Plants eerie mash-up of classics by John Lee Hooker, Big Boy Crudup and Robert Johnson, is easily the most Western-sounding thing on the disc, but it’s not necessarily the bluesiest. Back-to-Africa blues people like Ali Farka Toure, Oumou Sangare, Afel Bocoum and the French carny band Lo’Jo also made the trip to the big stage in the middle of nowhere; all outdo themselves, and yet still have a hard time upstaging the local singers in the all-women troupe Tartit or guitar wielding desert dwellers such as Takamba Super Onze, Sedoum Ehl Aida or Tinawaren. Bet it was because the latter were on home turf.