Mali: Tamikrest’s Journey From Kidal to the World

[Afropop] At GlobalFEST 2023 in New York City, we had the chance to hear one of the great bands of modern Tuareg music, sometimes called assuf (sadness) or ichumar (derived from the French word chomeur for “unemployed”), or as Western journalists sometimes call it, desert blues or desert rock. Tamikrest is a relatively young group in the genre, and before the show, Afropop’s Banning Eyre had a chance to speak with the group’s leader and founder, Ousmane Ag Mossa. Here’s their conversation.