Mohammed “Manny” Ag Ansar, founder and organiser of Mali’s legendary Festival in the Desert, is an incredibly humble man. This is born out by the fact that he often wonders why foreigners travel 80km into the Sahara desert to listen to music.
“People tell me that it is a magical experience,” he says, chuckling.
“They arrive after hours of flights and driving through the desert. They are tired and they swear never again,” says Ansar. “But when the music starts they forget the problems in the world and they are happy.”
Now in its eighth year, the Festival in the Desert is a gathering of the nomadic Tuareg people from the Sahara desert, in which they celebrate their culture through traditional music and dance — with a bit of camel racing on the side.
Some of the Tuareg travel for up to two weeks on the backs of camels to attend the festival, because they can trade animals and craft at the markets, receive medical attention from the numerous NGOs present and share one another’s music.
Thankfully the festival has been opened up to musicians and tourists from the rest of the world, but Ansar says most of the foreign visitors are from Europe and America and he is eager to spread word of the festival through Africa.
As part of his mission to get African musicians and tourists to flock to the annual festival, Ansar recently visited South Africa as a guest speaker of the Moshito conference, the South African music industry’s big annual pow-wow.
“I am here to raise the profile of the festival in South Africa and to look for South African artists to come and play next year,” says Ansar. “South Africa has a problem like America has. When you are a big country you tend to look inward at what is going on instead of looking out at the rest of the world.
“South Africa needs to look towards the rest of Africa. There are a lot of poor countries in Africa that manage to promote their artists and get their culture out into Africa and the rest of the world, yet South Africa is a rich country and it does not do this well,” he says.
Ansar is an expert on promoting local artists and his Festival in the Desert has made international stars out of many Malian musicians. In 1996 when peace finally came to the north of Mali, Tinariwen, a Tuareg guitar band that formed in the rebel camps in 1982, began a professional career.
Ansar, a fan of their independent tape releases that were distributed from one Tuareg to another, was instrumental in organising some of their early gigs and soon became their manager.
After meeting a French band, Lojo, at a festival in Bamako, Mali’s capital, in 1998, Tinariwen were invited to play at the Les Nuits Toucouleurs festival in Angiers, France, in 1999.
Tinariwen reciprocated by inviting Lojo back to Mali to play at some traditional festivals in the north and the idea for the first Festival in the Desert was born. “We wanted it to be a festival that focused on the traditional music of Mali, but also one where local musicians could interact with other musicians from greater Africa and the rest of the world,” says Ansar.
“In the beginning the festival was meant to be a nomadic festival like the Tuareg people, to travel around the desert from town to town,” says Ansar. “But it grew and we had to keep it in one place because it costs.”
Ansar says the first festival in 2001 had five bands and 500 audience members, but by 2003 there were 35 bands and 5 000 visitors. It has since grown to more than 10 000 visitors and is a logistics nightmare for Ansar and his team to organise.
“This is not like other music festivals,” says Ansar. “Everything has to be brought into the desert — the stage, the sound equipment, the water — and we have to organise camping and food for thousands.”
But Ansar says the festival has other benefits: “Before when the Tuareg people needed to buy things they had to travel for weeks by camel to Timbuktu with their animals to trade at the markets and buy clothes or medicine. Now the market comes to them.
“They can trade their craft with foreigners and so the economic impact for the Tuareg people is huge.
“It is also difficult for NGOs to reach the Tuareg people because they have to travel far into the desert just to reach small communities of Tuareg people,” says Ansar. “So the festival is an opportunity for NGOs to have access to thousands - they can give people educational information and medical treatment and advice.”
Ansar says it is this melting pot of Malian cultures with other African and international guests that makes the festival such a unique experience.
“This is not like other festivals in the world where you go to a festival for a few hours and then you go home. At the Festival in the Desert there is nowhere to go, everyone is together: Robert Plant is there on the sand, Bassekou Kouyate is there, the ambassador of South Africa is there.
“We are all together and we are all moving under the same stars.”
Malian sounds
If you’re looking for an introduction to the music of northern Mali there is no better jumping off point than Tinariwen.
Formed in 1982 in the Tuareg rebel camps by Ibrahim Ag Alhabibe, Tinariwen’s first recording available outside Mali was 2002’s The Radio Tsidas Sessions, but interested listeners should track down their third album, Aman Iman (World Village), which was released last year.
Combining traditional Tuareg music with electric guitars, Tinariwen have been described often as the Rolling Stones of the desert. What you can expect is hypnotic desert blues that will captivate and entrance.
Tinariwen’s international success has opened the doors for many other Tuareg desert rock bands, including Etran Finatawa. This Niger-based band is composed of Tuareg and Wodaabe members and their music is similar to the nomad blues of Tinariwen, but the polyphonic singing of the Wodaabe is something that sets them apart from their peers.
Their second album, Desert Crossroads (World Music Network), was released in April this year and their songs about maintaining their herding lifestyle in times of environmental, political and social change are set to put this band on the world music map.
Moving further south to Bamako, the capital of Mali, the focus turns to Toumani Diabaté, a legend of Malian music. He released his first international album, Kaira, which features Diabaté solo on his kora in 1987 and it is still considered one of the finest kora albums.
He has gone on to a long and celebrated career, which has seen a further seven albums and collaborations with a diverse range of musicians including Mali guitar legend Ali Farka Touré, Taj Mahal and Björk. His latest album, The Mandé Variations (World Circuit), was released in February this year and sees Diabaté returning to solo kora recordings, which are sublimely beautiful and a must for any serious world music fan.
Last but by no means least is the great Bassekou Kouyate, whose 2007 album, Segu Blue (Out Here Records), won BBC3 World Music awards for album of the year and African artist of the year. Although Segu Blue is his first album, Kouyate has featured on many award-winning albums by Toumani Diabaté and Ali Farka Touré. His wife, Amy Sacko, who is part of his band Ngoni ba, is also a popular Malian musician in her own right and is busy recording what is anticipated to be the album that will garner her international acclaim.