‘Desert Blues’ was a term created by music journalists back in the 90s to describe the music of Ali Farka Toure, Tinariwen, and others. But American blues really does have it roots in West Africa, particularly the Sahel and Sahara regions. Amongst the originators of the blues are the Kel Tamasheq or Tuareg people. On this album, Faris brings 12 rural Delta blues songs back home to Africa, revisiting them in the guitar style known as assouf and showing how close the souls of these two worlds are to each other. ‘Mississippi to Sahara’ was born as the intitiative of Sedryk, ...