www.nme.com/nme-video/festival-ali-farka-toure

I met Groupe Agna in Niafunke, Mali, a week before they were playing there at the Ali Farka Toure International festival, 2008. They were interested in my Pandeiro (Brazilian tambourine style instrument) and after some jams, asked if I would accompany them for their performance. The following week of rehearsals and the performance were such a great introduction to the lifestyle and musicianship of this great Tuareg band. They drink the strongest teas I know and swing harder than a demolition ball.

Vieux Farka Toure, a great guitar player set up his local band on a crossroads in Niafunke one evening and I wormed my way into the jam with my Pandeiro after a nod from the Djembe player. They had everything going through a single horn speaker hence the fab overdriven sound

After hard negotiation, I managed to catch a lift from Mopti to Timbuktu with a Tuareg tour guide driving there for business. The journey was a day and a half along dirt roads. We barely spoke to each other-he wasn’t into chatting, but he did have a guitar in the back and we squeezed in a jam in the evening