No, I haven’t been to the Festival in the Desert, not yet anyway. But I’ve travelled through Mali and loved it, from Bamako to Timbuktu. For years before that I’d been listening to Mali music which I discovered while living in Paris. There has always been a great love of African music there, from long before the phrase ‘world music’ was coined, due to the large community of Francophone Africans and exiled musicans in the 1980s. Along with Madagascar, where music just pumps through the blood, Mali is the most fertile African country for creative musicians, much thanks to their griots or caste of musicians and their ability to adapt their sounds without losing their roots.

For non-Africans, it all started with the King, Ali Farka Touré (who tragically died last year aged 67). After him comes a stream of young musicians pushing the boundaries further and further without abandoning their traditional music and its links to American blues. It’s no surprise to learn that back in the late 1960s Touré actually met Afro-Americans like Otis Redding, Ray Charles and John Lee Hooker, the Blues maestro. His musical collaborations brought brilliant stuff like Talking Timbuktu - with Ry Cooder sliding away, The Source with Taj Mahal and Nitin Sawhney and the sensational In the Heart of the Moon with Toumani Diabate and Ry Cooder. Touré’s last record, Savane, just about sums up the brilliance of this extraordinary man who always said he was a farmer first and foremost. Some would say Savane is his best - it packs in high energy, melancholy, passion, humanity and a rare spirituality.

Then there’s the other senior, Salif Keita, launched in the late 1960s with the legendary Rail Band du Buffet de l’Hotel de la Gare, a wildly popular Malian dance band. Keita’s melodic vocals hit the big time when he moved to Paris, like many musicans desperate to escape the hard economic times of Mali. He and Mory Kanté helped spread the Malian musical word throughout Europe in the 1980s.

Since then, we’ve also heard the younger, smoother but no less brilliant Habib Koite, descended from a family of professional griots (Baro, his second album, has unbeatable rhythm), Tinariwen, the amazing Tuareg rock band, (Aman Iman: Water of Life, their latest album, is completely haunting), Oumou Sangare who comes from the southern region of Wassoulou brings a different, more forceful sound while the latest female star, Rokia Traoré, takes her voice on a tour of the stratospheres. On her beautiful 2003 album, Bowmboi, she’s joined by the Kronos Quartet. Even when they’re not playing, it’s a delicate, highly melodic and soulful sound.

Finally - though there are plenty of others - there’s Amadou et Mariam. It’s hard to beat this romantic story of two blind people, both highly gifted musicians, who met studying Braille in Mali’s capital, Bamako. By the early 1980s they were married and performing together but, like others, soon fled the hardship of Mali for Abidjian, in the Ivory Coast. Next stop was Paris where in the late 1990s they recorded three major albums.

In those days, when world music was going though the roof in Paris, I remember going to the music section of the FNAC underneath the Louvre to listen to new releases and get ace tips from the salespeople (it may still be the case but I haven’t been there for a while). That’s where I discovered Sou Ni Tilé - their first big hit, which I never tire of listening to. A year or two later, I was in London at the Barbican for a Damon Albern concert with Mali musicians. It was OK, but not brilliant, something was lacking. As we left, music was coming from the foyer - and there we found Amadou et Mariam on a little platform, belting it out, swaying, singing, melodic, visually blind but completely tuned in. The crowd got bigger and bigger and the dancing started. It was a revelation. They were little known in the UK at the time but once Manu Chao (that’ll be another blog - Spanish/ Latino fusion) discovered them, the rest - as they say - was history. It was Manu Chao who produced their next album, the more sophisticated yet equally magical Dimanche a Bamako. As I said, hard to beat.

p.s. Damon Albern - I don’t mean to slag him off, as he has done masses to highlight this brilliant musical genre. His album, Mali Music, with musicians like Toumani Diabate, is another great …