Tinariwen at O2 Forum Kentish Town, London 2026

I have never seen the desert. Here’s what I can imagine about it: the quiet of it at night. The hush of the sand in the wind. How slow walking would be. How endless driving would feel. How exhilarating to be the only person for miles. The romantic calls it freedom. The pragmatic calls it challenge. The Tuareg people of the Sahara desert call it home. Tinariwen are its children, “The Desert Boys”.

They greet us with an “As-salamu alaykum! (ٱلسَّلَامُ عَلَيْكُمْ)” to which the audience riotously, joyously replies “Wa ʿalaykumu s-salām! (وَعَلَيْكُمُ ٱلسَّلَامُ)”. To the first strums of the swaying ‘Kel Tamashek’, it’s as if all the warmth and sunlight of North Africa comes on stage with them. Undoubtably one of the best mixed live acts on the road right now, just the tone of the bass guitar balanced against the 3 lead guitars is enough to make you cry, the softness of it under their voices, singing the blues of exile, homesickness and unending love for your friends. It’s like holding your soul up to the sun in the cup of your hands.

The genres blend and bleed into each other. You could have heard their music on the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack, the quintessential blues are there, but so is the Tuareg heart, danced out by Touhami Ag Alhassane, splendid in his blue damask clothing. They play ‘Imidiwan Takyadam’, originally recorded as a duet with the delightful José Gonzalez, and tonight, Sulafa Elyas joins them live for ‘Sagherat Assani’, adding her wonderful voice and subtle storytelling to the show’s soundscape.

For all this lightness, this band’s very existence is a miracle. Tinariwen started in the desert, in refugee camps with makeshift instruments, their lives sprawling and uncertain for decades in the political violence and uncertainty of the late 20th century. A lot of music is born of hardship. Theirs goes an extra step. Theirs is guerrilla music.

There was a time when music (specifically their music) was forbidden in the Sahara. There was a time when people would travel across the desert to find the band and ask them to play, filling cassettes and hearts alike. There were far too many times where they couldn’t return to their hometowns or even their country (the most recent being just two years ago, after the release of Amatssou). Watch their music videos. The art style – borrowing from anime and pushing saturation and colour-blocking to their natural startling limits – abstracts and transforms history and reality into legend. Theirs is a hero’s journey if ever a band earned one. They are the desert, as close as imagination can take someone who has never walked a sand dune and has never gazed on an expanse like the Sahara.

Not only have they pioneered a genre, but through their success, there are now several other Tuareg bands touring the world and paying the gift forward to the next generation, like Tamikrest and Imarhan (who I also reviewed recently, you can read all about it HERE). You need only listen to their latest album, Hoggar, named after the historic refuge of the Tuaregs in the Hoggar Mountains and recorded at Aboogi Studios (founded by Imarhan). From the art cover, with its gathering of friends on a stage in the sunset light, the homage paid to the many people who have helped write their story and will continue to do so is evident. After all, so many of their songs begin with a call of “Imidiwan” – “friends”, “companions”, “my friends”.

Hence the melancholy lining even the most energetic of their tracks. In what felt like a passing of the torch moment, it was Sadam of Imarhan who sang some of their best known songs, including ‘Toumast Tincha’ off their incredible album Emaar. Of course, they could only close with the double whammy of hits ‘Sastanàqqàm’ and ‘Chaghaybou’, to which I know the lyrics in Tamashek and to which my arms are up and the crowd around me dances with full abandon. A woman gets up on someone’s shoulders like it’s a summer festival. Scarves fly through the air. I don’t know who all these people are, how they know this band even exists, but something in our lives beat in harmony for us all to be together tonight.

For an encore, Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, the founder of Tinariwen, returns. Alone at first. He sings softly. His life has long ago earned him all the success he can now enjoy. He was a fierce youth. He still commands a crowd. And as the band joins him for one last song, I need to speak it aloud, the gratitude that they’ve all survived, that they’ve brought this music to the world, that they live as living proof of how music too can save your life.