Festival in The Desert

To most of my friends' dismay, I enjoy "world music."  I love hearing foreign tunes in foreign languages.  One of my friends won't listen to music in languages other than English.  Instrumental is fine though.

This is a music festival in Mali, called Festival in the Desert.  For some reason, in 2004 my friend and I thought we could convince our parents to let us go, without them.  It didn't work out, and I still haven't made it.

I'm getting closer though.  One band that plays at the festival, Tinariwen, is apparently pretty popular.  They're Touareg, so I'm sure they've got pretty sick yurts.  This one night I got an Uber driver in a GL450 to drive me around all night.  Turns out he was from Morocco and knows a guy who owns a guy who does sound for them.

Then a few weeks ago, I went to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.  So there I was, holding a piece of the moon that was on sale for $58,000.00 and next thing I know, the guy that found it is telling me he loves Tinariwen too.  He found the moon-meteorite in Mali, while traveling with the Touareg!

I want to say that I'll see you there!  But there hasn't been a festival since 2013.  The organizers have put a hold on the festival, due to civil unrest.