Tuareg Music

Tuareg music is the guitar-led tradition of the Tuareg people of the Sahara, known internationally as desert blues and in Tamasheq as tishoumaren or assouf. Born in the refugee camps and exile communities of Mali, Niger, Algeria and Libya, it pairs hypnotic electric guitar lines and handclap rhythms with poetry of displacement, resistance and longing for the desert homeland. *Tinariwen*, ex-combatants turned bandleaders, carried it worldwide from 2001, and a younger generation led by *Bombino* and *Mdou Moctar* made the Tuareg guitar a global sound.