45. The Rough Guide to the Music of the Sahara

The Sahara desert is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, nature's burning white challenge to man's arrogance. The Sahara is anything but empty though. The nomads who know and roam the breadth of northern Africa carry a hardy music that is the ancient root of much that we take for granted in our own blues and soul. This superb sampler moves like a caravan through these sands, connecting the polyrhythmic tumble and call-response chants of Chet Fewet from southern Libya to the electric R&B of Mali's Tinariwen and the haunting vocal poetry of Sahraoui Bachir, a Berber from the desert region of Algeria whose long modal cries seem to span entire centuries of pride and love for his people's home.

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