Desert Blues
News: Niger’s psych-rock guitar sensation Mdou Moctar announces debut Australian tour in 2023, including the iconic WOMADelaide festival.
Mistletone proudly present, for their very first appearances in Australia, Niger’s Mdou Moctar, with the full band performing across a number of dates in March 2023. A self-taught Tuareg guitar prodigy, Mdou Moctar boldly reforges contemporary Saharan music and contemporary rock music by melding Eddie Van Halen-like pyrotechnics and guitar shredding, field recordings, drums rhythms, …
Mali’s “Hendrix of the Sahara”, Vieux Farka Touré returns to Australia with new album ‘Les Racines’ in tow.
Legendary Malian guitarist, Vieux Farka Touré, along with his band, has announced a full Australian tour in 2023 from February 24 until March 11. One of the world’s most respected guitarists and musicians, Touré returns to Australia with his full band to perform from his extensive back catalogue and critically acclaimed new LP, ‘Les Racines’, …
Live review: Tamikrest play breathtaking set at the Nolan Gallery, MONA, nipaluna/Hobart, 26/10/2022.
I am a relatively recent convert to some of the “desert rock/desert blues” that has come to notice in increasing amounts in Western countries over the past 5 years or so. Bands such as Songhoy Blues, Tinariwen and Mdou Moctar along with Ali Farka Touré and son Vieux Farka Touré come to mind. Given that, …
News: Malian Desert Rock Icons, Tamikrest, announce inaugural tour to Australia.
Over the last 30 years, there has been a slow, yet steady emergence from the Malian, and Western Sahara regions of a top-flight style of world music known as ‘desert blues’ or ‘desert rock’. Following in the footsteps of internationally renowned legend and grand pioneer of desert blues, Ali Farka Toure, fellow proponents of the …
New Track: Noori & His Dorpa Band release debut single ‘Al Amal’, scorching ethio-soul vibes from Port Sudan.
So TikTok does have a function! Excavated from the app by those seekers of the undiscovered at Ostinato Records, Noori & His Dorpa Band bring the power and passion of Beja culture direct from their home base on the Sudanese coast. Out front, leader Noori plays a self- built, hybrid tambo-guitar, a welded wonder that …
Droppin’ Knowledge: On His LP Border Patrol, Singer-Songwriter Farees Turns Trauma Into Art, With Humor, Grace and Righteous Anger
When Farees, the singer-song writer, released his stirring debut solo album in 2015, Mississippi to Sahara, (under the name Faris), he did what many artists do; he planned a tour to support the album. The tour would traverse the United States, with stops at summer festivals and storied music venues, including the Public Theater in …