Songs for Desert Refugees...a compilation in aid of the refugees from Northern Mali

On January 17, 2012, insurgents fighting for the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (NMLA) attacked the town of Menaka in the far east of Mali. The fighting soon spread all over the deserts of northern Mali, provoking the most serious crisis that the country had faced since independence in 1960. Tens of thousands of Touareg, Songhoi, Peulh and Arab people fled from the fighting to the relative safety of neighboring countries. The result was the worst refugee crisis in the southern Sahara in decades. 

Songs for Desert Refugees features a superb mix of desert music, including rare or unreleased tracks by some of the world's best-known Touareg groups, from Mali (Tinariwen, Tamikrest, Terakaft, Tartit), Niger (Bombino, Toumast, Etran Finatawa) and Algeria (Nabil Baly Othmani, Faris). The music on this compilation is the sound of what the Malian deserts can be; intense, joyful, beautiful, proud, poetic and peaceful. It is dedicated to all those who are working to make it so again. All involved in producing the album gave their services for free. Other artists include: Ibrahim Djo Experience, Amanar and Tadalat.

Songs for Desert Refugees

As with 2005's Rough Guide to the Sahara, the 12 tracks, most previously unreleased and all postdating that prophetic piece of genre-making, progress like a single expression toward the showy new jack guitars of Tadalat and Bombino and the overdue female voices of Toumast and Tamikrest. --MSNBC Expert Witness

...the album as it stands is masterful, and certainly one of the strongest world music albums of the year. It serves equally well as an introduction to this exciting strain of guitar-based African music and as a new set of tunes for listeners already familiar with the genre. --Popmatters

  1. Amous Idraout Assouf d'Alwa (Tinariwen)
  2. Warktifed (Tamikrest)
  3. Blues du Désert Part 1 (Ibrahim Djo Experience)
  4. Derhan Alkher (Faris & Terakaft)
  5. Teswa Ténéré Desert Version (Nabil Baly Othmani)
  6. Ténéré (Amanar)
  7. Taghdart (Tadalat)
  8. Gourma (Etran Finatawa)
  9. Nak Essanagh (Terakaft)
  10. Aïtma (Toumast)
  11. Tigrawahi Tikma Live Version (Bombino)
  12. Tihou Beyatene (Tartit)