Tinariwen
formed late 1970s
Tuareg collective from the Sahara whose guitar music is filed under “desert blues” — though they say they first heard American blues on tour in the 2000s.
— the name is Tamasheq for “deserts” — formed among Tuareg exiles in southern Algeria and northern Mali in the late 1970s. Founder Ibrahim Ag Alhabib built his first guitar from an oil can, a stick, and a bicycle brake wire, and learned on old Tuareg melodies, Arabic pop, and 's cassettes. Their songs of exile and rebellion circulated for years on tape before their first studio album in the early 1990s and their international touring from the early 2000s; Tassili (2011) won a Grammy. Members have said the resemblance to American blues is not borrowed — they had not heard it until they left the Sahara, and the bootlegs that did reach them were Dire Straits and Jimi Hendrix.