Live From Festival au Desert Timbuktu

As anyone who has made the annual trip to northern Mali knows, the Festival in the Desert is a unique event, at which camel-riding Touaregs and world music tourists mingle in order to listen to some extraordinary music in a remarkable setting. Established in 2001, its 12th edition took place last year, weeks before the imposition of sharia law and the suppression of music across the region. When the festival will be able to return is uncertain, so in the meantime we must make do with this 17-track souvenir of the 2012 festival. With no Western pop stars in attendance for once – Robert Plant, Damon Albarn and Manu Chao have all attended in the past – the stage was given over to a host of Touareg groups and a handful of names from the wider firmament of Malian music, such as Bassekou Kouyaté and Habib Koité.

Few live recordings ever capture the atmosphere of being there and this rather crude mixing-desk recording of the event suffers more than most. Highlights include Kiran Ahluwalia on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s ‘Mustt Mustt’, backed by members of Tinariwen; and Samba Touré’s funky crowd-stirrer ‘Walahi Mbafo. But elsewhere the recordings fall flat, including that of the unfortunate Touareg troupe Tartit; their chanting on ‘Democratie’ may have sounded hypnotic in its Saharan setting, but is tunelessly unlistenable when divorced from its desert ambience.