Festival au Désert

The Festival au désert ("Festival in the Desert") was a Mali annual performance that featured traditional Tuareg music as well as international music. This is one of the things about Mali you should know before travelling. The first Festival was held in Tin Essako in 2001, followed by Tessalit in 2002, then Essakane from 2003 to 2009. Because of security concerns, it was held on the outskirts of Timbuktu from 2010 to 2012, and it has not been held since.

The Festival au Désert was the first of its kind in North Africa, claiming (in what ethnomusicologist Marta Amico called paternalistic terms, promoting tourism in a poor region) that it carried on a long history of traditional Tuareg feasts that encouraged musical and social exchange. The first festival was held in Tin Essako in 2001, and it was then moved to Tessalit in the Kidal district of northern Mali in 2002. The festival was hosted at Essakane, 65 kilometers from Timbuktu, from 2003 to 2009, but due to security concerns, it was moved to the outskirts of Timbuktu in 2010.

The Desert Festival has grown from a traditional Tuareg gathering with spirited debates and entertainment to an international peace event. Festival goers still remember the 1996 Flame of Peace celebration in Timbuktu, when over 3,000 guns were burned. Unlike many other music festivals, the stage is surrounded entirely by desert, and the audience is completely silent.