The members of Tinariwen play Saharan desert blues like they invented them, and as far as this world music neophyte knows, maybe they did . . . though the music itself sounds like it comes from a time and place much older than anything our American innovators knew about. “World music” is almost so broad a category as to be offensive, and the idea of “world music” fans (of which there were many in the crowd—parents who sent their kids to Montessori school and donated to PBS, God love ‘em!) can truly chill the cynical. So to even call it blues is a stretch, except that Tinariwen sing stories that, for better or worse, were narratively incomprehensible to many of the attendees at Saturday night’s show—but narrative aside, that voice carried enough emotion to render the songs simultaneously joyful and melancholy and ancient and cutting-edge. Taking the stage in full costume—desert wraps that could shame Sun City Girls—Tinariwen used electric guitars and a single drum in their pursuits, playing droned/zoned jams that made obvious their influence on bands like Entrance. They opened for the Rolling Stones, which puts them in the same unlikely category as Guns n’ Roses, but Tinariwen played with a passion and beauty that should make Slash throw away his top hat and beg for mercy.

Tags: live, mp3, nomads, sudan, tinariwen, toureg